Alzheimer's research

Editor's note: This guest post is by J. Patrick Berry, a former partner of the law firm Baker Botts LLP where he currently serves as Senior Counsel. The views expressed below are those of Mr. Berry and do not reflect the views of Baker Botts LLP. Mr. Berry is a founding board member of USAgainstAlzheimer's and is also the author of Escape from Enchantment, a novella based on his own family's experience with Alzheimer's.

Originally posted at www.healthcentral.com

The other day my husband and I were making out our Last Will and Testament. Not a fun chore, to be sure, but ultimately necessary (though, of course, we're never going to die).

Originally posted at blog.aarp.com.

Married people live longer and healthier lives. Consider this: nine out of ten married men who are alive at 48 will make it to 65-years-old (no, it will not just seem like it) as compared with six out of 10 of men who are not married. Women on the other hand are in better shape statistically. So be aware men; Marriage can save your life. Be grateful. I will be forwarding this to my husband.

Remember the good old days when statins were the safest drug to take? Oh, wait, that was last month.

When my husband George and I launched the USAgainstAlzheimer’s Network last year, our lofty vision was to unite the power of US - researchers, millions of families and advocates, hundreds of companies and our public officials.

We believed (and still do) that together, we will spur the innovations in science, industry practice and regulatory processes essential to the discovery of safe and effective therapies needed to stop Alzheimer's.

Two weeks ago, I was sitting here combing through the newspapers and I was ecstatic that the lockout is over: the football season, not the government. The players and owners can get together. Maybe they should coach the government on negotiating and coming together. Oh, wait, they already offered to do that.

I have been to some Congressional hearings and might I sum most of them up right now: yawn.

Except for the hearing two weeks ago on Alzheimer’s. So maybe you have to be interested – okay, passionately involved – in the subject for a hearing to be interesting. You say Alzheimer’s and I’m there.

I read this article today, which relates:

"Beloved science fiction and fantasy writer Terry Pratchett has terminal early-onset Alzheimer's. He's determined to have the option of choosing the time and place of his death, rather than enduring the potentially horrific drawn-out death that Alzheimer's sometimes brings. But Britain bans assisted suicide, and Pratchett is campaigning to have the law changed."

On Sunday, May 22, Margaret Morganroth Gullette wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, titled, Our Irrational Fear of Forgetting.

And I responded to her, in my letter to the editor. But I didn’t quite get everything off my chest.

There is so much wrong with her editorial.

This woman is in denial.