At the beginning of August, he started having difficulty controlling his left arm, and the doctors, at first, thought it could be a complication of his recent prostate cancer diagnosis. Unfortunately, last week it became confirmed that Lito was suffering from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
CJD is a relatively obscure disease, and in Brazil, for the average Brazilian, it was pretty much a complete unknown ailment.
Now the whole country is in tears watching the developments. His wife, Mila, started a campaign trying to get Lito on any one of the clinical trials currently being made.
Specifically, there are 2 CJD clinical trials being done in Harvard at the moment:
@ionis_pharma — ION717 trial @broadinstitute — PRiSM trial
Everybody knows what the prognosis for prion diseases are. Mila knows it. Lito knows it. They are just asking for a chance at having hope. They only want to be allowed a compassionate use exemption.
I've seen more grown men cry those last few days down here in Brazil than I ever saw in my whole life. I never cried for a parasocial relationship before, but... if you are Brazilian, and you followed this guy, you would understand. The world will be worse the day Lito is not here with us anymore.