BY HARRIET HALL, M.D.
Alzheimer’s sucks! It is a relentless, devastating, cruel disease that destroys patients’ memory and personality, making them no longer the person they used to be. It leaves its victims dependent on caretakers and eventually kills them an average of 4 to 8 years after diagnosis. Ten percent of the population over the age of 65 has it; the incidence is 3% at age 65 and rises to 32% at age 85. As our population ages, millions more will be afflicted, with resultant social and financial costs for society. Already today, 15 million Americans are unpaid caretakers for patients with some form of dementia.
Alzheimer’s can be definitively diagnosed only after death, at autopsy. A substantial percentage of those clinically diagnosed with Alzheimer’s actually have other causes of dementia. As yet, there is no reliable way to make an early diagnosis, and no way to change the course of the disease once it has been diagnosed. Today researchers are developing biomarkers (spinal fluid proteins) and brain imaging methods that improve diagnostic accuracy and may eventually permit early diagnosis before the onset of symptoms. Six drugs have been approved by the FDA for the treatment of Alzheimer’s, but the drugs alleviate only some of the symptoms.1 No drug slows or stops the progression of the disease. And there is nothing that can reverse the damage.
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About Skeptic
EVIL, THEISM, and ATHEISM
Answering the Hard Question “You’re an Atheist?! How Do You Find Meaning and Morality in Life if There is No God?”; God, Heaven, and Evil: A Renewed Defense of Atheism; The Devil’s Mark: The Evaluation of Evil, the Measurement of Morality, and the Statistical Significance of Sin; Whence Cometh Evil? The Concept and Mechanics of Natural Evil; Virtuous Reality: Why Right and Wrong Seem Real: a Critique of Moral Realism; Tearing Down Mr. Hume’s Wall: A Response to Moral Realism Skeptics; Brazilian Cancer Quackery; The “Sonic Attack” on U.S. Diplomats in Cuba: Why the State Department’s Claims Don’t Add Up; Understanding Human Skeletal Variation; Updating the Software and Hardware in Educational Practice: A Way Forward for Science and Mathematics Education; Why Freud Matters: Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, and the Skeptical Humanist Tradition; Hope and Hype for Alzheimer’s; I, Too, Am Thinking About Me, Too; Junior Skeptic: The Incredible Claims of Pet Psychics…