VOLUME 30, ISSUE 1 • March 2026. Full issue »

A New Year's wish carrying hope for the global Huntington’s disease community

Across cultures, religions and countries around the world, families gather in homes on New Year’s Eve. Clocks counting down to midnight, time zone by time zone; it is a time for reflection, goodwill, celebration, and wishes for the coming year. Sharing the wish for a cure or treatment, families living with Huntington’s disease have created a new tradition, “the New Year’s Eve worldwide wish to cure HD.” In a seven-hour livestreamed virtual meeting, families take turns sharing where they are from, how HD touches their lives, their hopes and wishes related to HD for the coming year.

This year more than 80 families from 26 nations, across all six populated continents, toasted and wished for access to care, reduced stigma, advances in basic science, success of clinical trials and increased public awareness. All the wishes were made with expressions of hope and gratitude.

As is the tradition, the wish is launched with a native folk song by Olaf Moen in Norway. The livestream joined a large New Year’s Eve family feast in Milan, Italy. Eight residents and staff logged in from Home Marjorie, a specialty care home for residents with HD in Belgium. Also celebrating their Hogmanay evening in Scotland, a wife raised a toast to a cure. Poems of hope were read from Ireland, Australia, England, and the USA. The final wishes came from families in Australia, where it was already New Year’s Day.

Together they celebrated a negative predictive test and a carer’s cancer-free status. In one country, where it is difficult for families to connect and organize, a neurologist represented her patients. From another country, which prohibits logging in, two other neurologists contributed videos on their families’ behalf. Apparent chorea, dystonia, dysarthria, and cognitive delays were no barrier to affected participants’ full participation.

Organized and hosted by Asuncion Martinez in Madrid, Cristina Ferreira in Lisbon, and Jimmy Pollard in Boston, The Wish has grown since it first went online six years ago.

As Ferreira recalls: “There’s no way I will let you do that alone.”

Thus it began — what was meant to be one night of shared courage became a tradition stitched with light. Since 2020, I have found myself co-organizing and hosting New Year’s Eve not as an event, but as a ritual of hope.

By 2023, H-Hands — “my” Hands — began to bloom like constellations across screens, and in 2024, we set the dream free through livestream. We were never alone. One by one, others joined — to host, to cheer, to weave their voices into this growing chorus of care.

Each family carries its own tale, tender or humorous, of how joy defies destiny. It is not something found, but something forged — human-made.

Once a year, our HD community, with hearts wide open, wish in their native tongues for a cure. For every “Happy New Year” whispered into the digital night is also a prayer, a promise, a rebellion against despair.

That is our NYE — where connection becomes celebration, where hope becomes a verb. Because where there is a field of dreams, indeed, “people will come.”

Asuncion always “looks forward to seeing the smiles on my friends’ faces online very much. I’m happy and honored to be able to say hello to them on this special night.”

“It’s always poignant and fun, both at the same time!” Pollard said.