After Augie Nieto was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which is also known at Lou Gehrig's disease, he brought together a team of physicians, geneticists, and ALS experts to identify a genetic basis for the disease so a treatment can be found. Nieto is the founder of a top manufacturer of exercise equipment for gyms. In nine months, Nieto's effort has provided some clues for a better understanding of the disease. While the chances of stopping Nieto's disease from progressing are small, researchers are using the new information provided by his group to study existing drugs and determine if any might help him and other sufferers. Nieto is one of several wealthy patients who are funding new technology to boost efforts in the search for a cure. Their efforts involve machines that sort through DNA at extremely fast speeds, identifying minute genetic differences that tend to appear more often in people with intractable illnesses than in others. Finding such differences is key to understanding the foundations of a disease, which can, in turn, lead to new treatments. Using these machines is very expensive, however, the government funding for the efforts is low, but privately funded gene research is occurring in regard to a number of maladies, such as autism, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease. It is too soon to know whether the genetic research will provide new treatments, and some doctors question whether the research could harm patients in its rush to discover a cure.