Australian Trimethylaminuria Foundation website

As regular readers know, Robert Brown of the Yahoo TMAUcure forum has been busy setting up The Australian Trimethylaminuria Foundation, and he announced yesterday that the website is almost near completion and can be found at this address

http://www.tmaufoundation.org.au/

The organisation is closely associated with the exciting trimethylaminuria research proposal by Dr Christodoulou et al, which looks to be the most promising research into TMAU yet, and has been well documented here recently. Soon the body odor and halitosis community will be able to exercise the right to donate online to something promising in a few clicks.

Here is Robs full post on the latest update, from his TMAUcure Yahoo forum
TMAUcure Yahoo Forum Post can be seen here: post about Australian TMAU Foundation

I’d like to let everyone know that a receipt will be forwarded from the ATF for every donation and donors will be kept up to date on the progress of the research fund.

A very big thank you to those who have already donated.

Unlike the fund at NORD the ATF fund will not be absorbed into a general fund if it fails to reach a certain level within a certain time. Moreover, there will be no long process of bidding for the fund. What we are offering through the ATF is a fund that will go to a definite research project that people can read about in the files section at TMAUcure@yahoogroups.com and on the ATF website at www.tmaufoundation.org.au. It is a brilliant proposal whose results will be readily transferable to humans from the mouse model. The research proposal has been written by Dr John Christodoulou and his team and he will not have to wait goodness knows how many years to compete for a fund at NORD that may never reach it's target and may never go to TMAU research which we’ve seen happen before with NORD funds.

The research will be carried out through:

Western Sydney Genetics Program, The Children's Hospital at Westmead,

Sydney, Disciplines of Paediatrics and Child Health & Genetic Medicine,

University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.

And

Children’s Medical Research Institute, University of Sydney, Westmead, New

South Wales 2145, Australia.

The money required for Dr C's research is a lot. However, we can begin the research as soon as we raise the money to fund the first year's research as it is designed to be carried out in stages. Clear costings are provided by Dr C. in the proposal document. Also, the money that is donated to the research project goes into a trust account that can be accessed by absolutely nobody except at the direction of the board of directors and then only after a vote by all members of the Foundation. That is why I encourage donors to also become members of the ATF. The ATF is prevented by law from making payments to directors or distributions to members. The money raised can only be applied to the aims of the foundation which, as stated in the foundation's constitution, are directed at scientific research into TMAU. The ATF is independently audited and those audits as well as a copy of the ATF constitution will be available on the ATF website at http://www.tmaufoundation.org.au/ once construction is complete.

The ATF is a registered not for profit charity endorsed by the Commissioner for Taxation as a tax free and tax deductible entity. (See registration certificate in newsletter Vol. 1 Issue 2, also available on our website and on the various online forums) If anyone has any questions about the ATF and the research fund or the project itself I am happy to respond.

In the end, it wouldn't matter where the science got done. It could be done in Timbuktu for all I care - as long as it gets done and gets done yesterday. But research into a cure or better treatments is stalled everywhere it seems. That is the reason for this research fund. There are TMAUers all over the world. They belong to every race in every country. If we are going to fix this thing we need to think globally so that we can speak with one voice and make the biggest noise possible to attract funding. The ATF is trying to orchestrate that voice. We may be sufferers of a rare condition but count us up among the worlds 6 billion people and there are hundreds of thousands of us and probably an order of magnitude greater than that. With numbers like that we can do this!

As mentioned in a post at TMAUcure@yahoogroups.com, as well as smaller donations from TMAUers themselves, the ATF is now contacting philanthropic organisations and large pharmaceutical companies requesting funding. We will also be making requests to federal and state Health Departments here in Australia. I will post more about these efforts when successes occur - I don't want to shoot my mouth of just yet before the fish is in the bag (pardon the pun). Moreover, our website will be using the Google pay per click facility so that the ATF site will come up when people key in certain phrases calculated to attract potential donors. There is also our benefactor in Melbourne with whom negotiations are still afoot.

Please email if you have any questions.

Thanks and best wishes to all.

Rob

Australian Trimethylaminuria Foundation