msc

*checks* So she did. Another one bites the dust.

Well done DI!

Half-way updates... 2011 - Irving Kahn, Dr Sree Sree Swaniji, Roy Douglas, Nicholas Winton, Luise Rainer, Madga Olivero, Johan Van Hulst, Ebby Halliday, Amelia Boynton Robinson, Clare Hollingworth, Mary Carlisle, Douglas Slocombe (12/50) 2012 - Penny Marshall, Harper Lee, Peregrine Worsthorne, Manuel Noriega, Clive James, Mary Wilson, Leslie Philips, (7/20) 2013 - Robert Mugabe,Judy Blume, Roy Mason, Nicholas Edwards, Danny Kirwan, Bob Dole, Joao Havelange, Muhammad Ali, Michael Jopling, Mark Eden, Ryan Buell, Freddie Starr (12/20) 2014 - 15/20 Almost curious to see if the centenarians of 2011 can outlive the mostly younger bunch in 2012 now.

It happens. Years ago I posted on this forum about a dream I had in which Blake Edwards died. It did seem a rather random thing to dream about. Two days later, he actually died.

Sorry to hear about your dad, first and foremost. We've had a few experiences of that illness in the family and its genuinely hideous. So much sympathy in that regard. The internet is great for getting long distant relatives back together though. A few years ago I realised I knew sod all about my family tree, or family beyond the few folk I saw regularly. So I made an effort to get in touch with a bunch of cousins whose names I'd heard often from the older members of the family but never seen (it had been an open invite, I'd just been a bit shy about it before) outside of funerals. But then when I was investigating the family tree, I came across two branches of the family completely unexpectedly. A relative of my mums grandad who keeps in touch via email, who was able to give us lots of information we'd lost about my great-grandad. And delightfully, my cousin via my dads mum (who died before I was born) whom I never knew existed, but we have become fine friends since. She's about a decade older than me so able to fill in lots of details about the granny I never knew, and had pictures too! It's like little pieces of gold dust! So yeah, its utterly delightful when this all comes together like this, and how nice it has for you at a time when you'd really need the good stuff! Best wishes and good luck to you.

Shaw Taylor. Random guess.

link

Nah, suicidal depression has no discriminations - you could be rich, popular and health and it'd still stick its claws in.

Lex Luger had been mending since his stroke in 2008 (walking with a cane) but according to recent appearances at fan things, his health has since significantly deteriorated and hes confined to a wheelchair.

Link Nice one, obitable but - according to her own words - "near the end of the road." Which presumably means the car is well and truly parked by 31 December. Has a touch of the Philip Gould to it, yes, but you never know...

Former Deathlist pick and utterly unpronounceable Thai King reminds folk of his health by going back into hospital.

All of these events are yet to happen, but Chapman did get Pincher'd, so that'll be more points to me.

Only way he's missing the 2015 list is if he dies before then. "Misses" of folk who had been on the previous list tend to be the old age ones.

Each of us pass the anniversary of our death every year without noticing. As someone famous once said.

Well, health care has improved a bit since then. Mind you, it is important to note that what we think of Black Death was really a whole host of different plagues all at once - bubonic, hemorrhagic, and several others, alongside the usual ails of the time, yer choleras and their pals. It was a massive viral soup which it infested into. But I suppose it wouldn't help your frame of mind to know that not only does Black Death (well, bubonic) have around 15 victims a year in the USA currently(its far more common in Asia and Africa), there are signs of it becoming drug-resistant in places. But it has a 75% or there abouts mortality rate. The big disgrace in all of this is that there are almost certainly people in Africa who are dead now from this outbreak who should be alive if someone had put human need over profit. Theres been drugs believed to aide Ebola since at least 2004, and I strongly suspect since 1975 (when the European researcher infected with it the next year was cured!). As soon as it manages to infect a rich European or American, bet your bottom dollar a cure is "miraculously" found.

Yes, but we're talking a disease which has had 2387 cases reported...ever... until this recent outbreak. Its not nearly wide enough a sample to know what the disease would do en masse YET. Its also mostly been in isolated pockets, with limited victims. There's also the case that the more people infected per outbreak, the larger the survival rate - in the 2000 Uganda outbreak, nearly 50% of sufferers lived to tell the tale. Rather than being the outright harbinger of death, it seems to depend on underlying health issues/quality of nearby medical facilities/etc. The chap who came down with suspected Ebola in Germany in 1999, he died. [And that was one of only 2 cases in Europe - neither of which caused a mass outbreak due to isolation methods.] At the same time, there was a report that linked a plant which is a heavy source of diet in parts of West Africa, with stavving off the Ebola - not sure if anything came of that though. Even in this outbreak, it still fits in, as the area that Doctor mentioned on the forum previously worked in had saved the lives of 100 sufferers already from this current outbreak. And that is just a snippet in the news story about death and destruction, from one area. So yeah, 90% mortality comes from lack of education on the virus/access to the drugs. There's a lot of scary disease news stories out there (including a new strand of smallpox appearing in Georgia in May, and most of the worlds finest AIDS researchers being wiped out in that bloody plane) and Ebola is easily top of the list for its qualities - I think most Europeans have a race memory of the Black Death, which is similar, and we didn't defeat that either yet - but its not going to cause a worldwide crisis akin to the Spanish Flu. Also, Ali, the WHO are pushing for the widespread release, or investigation of, further medicines believed to have an effect on the Ebola virus. Unfortunately, as I alluded to above, the very numbers you quote are the types of ones the pharmaceutical companies look at, snort and say "Too small a number, there's no money in it."

Ebola has been largely ignored by the West for the last few decades as its been consigned to poorer African countries. As soon as it starts to risk places to make the oprhan drug principle* obsolete, work to better deal with it will occur before you can say "profit". Hemorrhagic fevers are still quite common - even in the USA, there was fourteen cases of bubonic plague in 2013. *Namely, the idea of a cure or drug which works in principle, but which, as the condition attacks only poor people or a few rare cases, isn't seen as profitable enough to make the medicine. Several of the WHO's list of medicines they consider a human right for people to get fall under this! So ebola - scary disease, nasty one, bugger if you get it, but the chances of it widespread taking out the world are rather thin. And if this recent outbreak gets the world more concerned to actually do something about it, it might help us all in the long term!

Ebola has something like a 90% mortality rate, and this chap saved 100 victims lives. So yeah, he was quite good.

More of a "non-suggestion for 2015" but in lieu of any other place to put it... DDP favourite Ryan Buell, allegedly a bit fraudy. And he still has "health issues" but your mileage may vary if he's actually playing those up much more than they are, as one might suspect... [i fully accept looking like a cunt if he now carks it in the next week.]

Dora Bryan There was a thread somewhere on her health but I can't find it.

Just trying to give the hares enough of a head start, honest.

Kind of my fault, as a bunch of folk who were in the final lot removed before I gave my Deathrace list in (Simon Hoggart, Alicia Rhett, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Lord McAlpine and Fernand Leduc) all promptly rewarded my faith in their existence by carking it by mid-January! Still, thats the bugger of prediction!

It appears, to be, yes - and if he is in rapidly failing health, its of interest to the DDP.

Ryuichi Sakamoto, who won the award for The Last Emperor, but is also well known for Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence. And he has throat cancer.

According to the Independent, he was alive and living in Dartmoor as of 2009. Not heard anything since then, though others may provide your proof!