Must reads

• An October 29, 2014 Huffington Post piece by USA2 co-founder Trish Vradenburg called on newspapers to better acknowledge Alzheimer's as a cause of death in obituaries. According to Vradenburg, "Ben Bradlee, the legendary editor of The Washington Post who was best known for exposing "Watergate," died last week. According to the Washington Post and the New York Times, Bradlee died of "natural causes."…It is time for us to come out of the shadows. It is time for newspapers to encourage truth in their obituaries. It is no shame to have a relative or friend with Alzheimer's - it is only a shame not to do something about it. Let's band together and make our loved ones who have faced this unforgiving disease stand for something meaningful. In their name we have to rise up and fight for funding. Maybe then Alzheimer's deaths really could take a holiday."
• An October 29, 2014 BBC News article reported that dementia is now the leading cause of death for women; the disease "now kills more than three times as many women as breast cancer and thousands more than either heart attacks or stroke." According to the article, "Analysts say the rising numbers may be because doctors are becoming more aware of the disease and recording it on death certificates more frequently. Coronary heart disease remains the leading cause of death in men. For males, dementia is the third most common cause of death." Also reported on by the Daily Mail, The Independent, and others. 
• An October 30, 2014 Rapid Growth Media article reported that Tetra Discovery Partners will begin human trials next year of two new drugs, one focused on brain injury and the other on Alzheimer's. According to the article, "Tetra’s Alzheimer’s drug, meanwhile, works to “modulate,” or re-configure, a particular fundamental neural pathway in the brain that contributes to memory and learning, Dr. Gurney says. While current drugs that treat memory loss in Alzheimer’s patients can usually only prevent the patient’s memory from worsening, Gurney says, early results on Tetra’s drug suggest that it could actually reverse a patient’s cognitive decline and restore memory functions that had previously been lost. “The [Alzheimer’s] drugs we’re working with actually improve memory in healthy animals,” Gurney says. “So they improve performance beyond what the healthy person is currently capable of. So with Alzheimer’s patients, we hope it will help improve their ability in daily living. We’d like to see an improvement rather than just them not worsening.”"