Brain, heart, and liver diseases are caused by loss of cells, but a tsunami of insights into how cells die is providing the first treatments and lifestyle changes for deadly, intractable diseases — Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, and Parkinson’s disease. Stroke, MS, and heart attack. These are the big, deadly diseases we can’t cure, and can hardly treat. They all involve untimely and mysterious deaths of cells that are the building blocks of critical bodily organs.