USA2 SPOTLIGHT

Must Watch: An April 2015 Comcast Newsmakers segment featured an interview with LatinosAgainstAlzheimer’s director Jason Resendez about the growing impact of Alzheimer’s on the Latino community. 

Add these to your reading list: Greg O'Brien's book "On Pluto: Inside the Mind of Alzheimer's" won for best medical book in the Beverly Hill Book Awards, and Meryl Comer's "Slow Dancing with a Stranger: Lost and Found in an Age of Alzheimer's" won for best memoir. Congratulations to both authors, who we're honored to work with, and thank you for sharing your brave insights into life with Alzheimer's.

MUST READS

An April 7, 2015 Quartz opinion piece by Dr. Reisa Sperling and Dr. Paul Stoffels underscored the need to invest in Alzheimer’s research to stop the disease by 2025. According to the authors, “In other words, Alzheimer’s is a slow-motion time bomb. The trouble is that the scale of the research has never met the size of the problem. And those of us who have worked in this field for decades have had limited success bringing attention to the magnitude of this deadly disorder.But a more collaborative, focused approach between the public and private sectors is beginning to take hold. Scientists engaged in it are making quick progress that promises to ultimately transform Alzheimer’s from a death sentence into a preventable illness…Finding an effective, disease-modifying treatment for Alzheimer’s by 2025 is an ambitious target. But it is critical that we continue to work together and increase our commitment to defeat this looming public health crisis. As we gaze into the faces of our grandparents and parents—our loved ones who no longer recognize their families—and the faces of our children who will have to care for us, it is clear that we have no other choice.” Dr. Reisa Sperling is a professor in neurology at Harvard Medical School, director of the Center for Alzheimer Research and Treatment at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and project leader of the A4 study. Dr. Paul Stoffels is the chief scientific officer at Johnson & Johnson, worldwide chairman of Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, and a leading researcher on HIV drug resistance and development.

An April 6, 2015 The Washington Post article reported on the unique health challenges that octogenarians face. According to the article, “I know most of the woman’s doctors. Each one is compassionate, smart and dedicated. Indeed, her diseases were largely under good control. Yet her health was declining, she was missing appointments and she was less and less able to care for herself and her apartment. Several of her clinicians recognized this, but none took action. This was not because of personal or professional failings. Their actions — and inaction — were the inevitable result of their medical training and our medical system’s sometimes myopic focus on medicine at the expense of health. Medical education prioritizes the same specialties today as it did a century ago, when life expectancy in the United States hovered around 50 and when tuberculosis and childbirth were among the leading killers. People in their eighth, ninth and 10th decades are as dissimilar, physiologically and socially, from middle-aged adults as children are, yet while all medical students learn pediatrics and adult medicine, there are no universal requirements for geriatrics training. This makes no sense demographically or medically. There are 48 times more octogenarians now than there were in the first half of the last century, and older patients are the age group most likely to be harmed by medical care.”

An April 7, 2015 The Washington Post article reported on “an astonishing case of sex and Alzheimers.” According to the article, “If Rayhons is proven to have had sex with Donna, Iowa sexual assault law is vague about how the case should be treated. The state outlawed non-consensual sex between a husband and wife 25 years ago, Elizabeth Barnhill, executive director of the Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault, told the Iowa City Press Citizen. State law also defines sex with a person suffering from a “mental defect or incapacity” as sexual abuse, but is not explicit about what is meant by the term “mental defect.” Meanwhile, Alzheimer’s experts differ on whether the disease really does preclude people from being able to give consent. Elizabeth Edgerly, a clinical psychologist who serves as chief program officer for the nonprofit Alzheimer’s Association, told the AP it can be hard to determine capacity in cases of dementia. “Is the person capable of saying no if they don’t want to do something? That’s one of the biggest pieces,” she said. Edgerly added that physical closeness with loved ones can often be helpful to people with the disease.”