Must reads and watch 

• A March 6, 2014 PBS NewsHour broadcast segment focused on new data that highlights a dramatic increase in the number of deaths due to Alzheimer's disease. According to the transcript, "The CDC ranks Alzheimer’s as the sixth-leading killer in the U.S., accounting for nearly 85,000 deaths a year. But the study in the journal “Neurology” puts the annual death toll around half-a-million, making it the third-leading cause of death, just behind heart disease and cancer, and ahead of chronic lung disease and strokes." [Just video] 
• A March 6, 2014 Reuters article reported on latest developments in genomic medicine. According to the article, "The expectation was that this single reference map of the 3 billion base pairs of DNA -- the human genetic code -- would quickly unlock the secrets of Alzheimer's, diabetes, cancer and other scourges of human health. As it turns out, Clinton's forecast was not unlike President George Bush's "mission accomplished" speech in the early days of the Iraq war, said Dr. Eric Topol of Scripps Translational Science Institute, which is running a meeting On the Future of Genomic Medicine here March 6-7...Recently, a combination of lower-cost sequencing technology and a growing list of wins in narrow corners of medicine are starting to show that genomic medicine is on the verge of delivering on at least some of those early claims."
• A March 6, 2014 Boston Globe article reported that Dr. Reisa Sperling, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School and an Alzheimer’s specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, was awarded an $8 million grant to expand Alzheimer's prevention research. According to the article, "In the next few months, Sperling and her colleagues are preparing to launch a study called A4, which will follow 1,000 adults, ages 65 to 85, who have abnormal proteins, known as amyloid plaques, revealed by brain scans, and who are exhibiting subtle cognitive problems that are typically reported in people years before they are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s."