The Myth of Alzheimers

“Wouldn’t you tell them anything to raise money!”

I am accurately quoting above in the title a prominent Alzheimer’s investigator but will not reveal his/her name. The story of the quote is interesting though because the statement was made in the lunch line at an NIH funded meeting of people conducting clinical trials in dementia. I was in line next to Leon Thal, a very prominent trialist who had just been quoted in Business Week, again accurately he confirmed, ) [...]

The Vanishing Mind -what are the real lessons of how to prevent its disappearance

In a previous blog we discussed what is now being considered by many a “disastrous” consensus conference on what we can do to prevent Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline held in Washington many weeks ago now but just recently reported in the New York Times. The answer according to the experts was nothing.The leadership of the [...]

A bit of gallows humor about “so-called Alzheimer’s” from The Onion [Video]

This spot relies on some old, tired stereotypes about Alzheimer’s, but manages (perhaps unintentionally) to raise some interesting question about the medicalization of brain aging. Specifically, who do our medical labels serve? How do those labels affect persons who receive them? Can we choose other words and labels that will help us orient to persons [...]

Guest post by Dr. Al Power: Why recent research supports the premise of The Myth of Alzheimer’s

Our friend and colleague Al Power, who writes for a blog called ChangingAging.org recently posted the story below in which he referred to The Myth. ChangingAging, which Al co-writes with Dr. Bill Thomas (an international leader in the Eden and Green House movements) and others is an excellent source of progressive thinking about aging issues, [...]

Fighting over the donations and money at the Alzheimer Association and AFA - too bad law suits chosen to wage war

Whatever else one thinks about “Alzheimer’s, ” we know there is big money involved - the costs of care, the cost of research, the costs of drugs and CAM therapies, and perhaps most importantly the opportunity costs of paying attention to the wrong concepts and issues. When directing an Alzheimer’s Center at an academic institution, [...]

Welcome to the GK New World Alzheimer’s Clinic

Rather than comment extensively about a recent New York Times report on the use of cerebral spinal fluid analysis for the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease reported in the Archives of Neurology, we will try to imagine a scenario in the New World Alzheimer’s disease clinic that illustrates the utility or lack thereof of this new diagnostic [...]

The New York Times tries harder but fails again in reporting the big picture of the new guidelines

On August 4 the Times published a news analysis reporting on the widespread concern about the new recommended (but clearly premature) guidelines for the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. The NIA and Alzheimer’s Association had had a conference call to “clarify” that these are only research guidelines. Well then, why did they claim that these new guidelines [...]

Eliminating Diabetes and Depression, and Boosting Education, Most Likely to Ward Off Dementia

I would like to use this post to reintroduce our readership to Ted Schettler, a pioneering environmental health advocate, and the Collaborative on Health and Environment. Here is a recent relevant posting sharing information relevant to dementia and referring to work by our friend Karen Ritchie published int the British Medical Journal. Peter— Eliminating diabetes [...]

Controversy continues -why promote expensive, unproven, “new” diagnostic guidelines?

Danny and I wrote this OpEd for the New York Times which was not accepted for publication so we thought we would share it here. You might also check out the Diane Rehm Show. One of the guest on the show, SanjayPimplikar, shared his frustrations with me about not getting through to the rather perseverative [...]

NFL (finally) addressing head injuries head-on

The NFL has published a new poster to be hung in locker rooms which offers blunt, scientifically-backed statements about the lifelong risks of head injuries. Most notably, the poster mentions that traumatic brain injuries can “lead to…the early onset of dementia” — an admission that the league has resisted making for years, particularly under the [...]