The Price We Pay for Longevity*
David Shenk's book, "The Forgetting: Alzheimer's Portrait of an Epidemic" provides some interesting statistics and insight into memory and the brain. According to Shenk, five million Americans have Alzheimer's. Beginning in 2011, the first of the baby boomers will turn sixty-five and start to unravel in significant numbers. By 2050, about 15 million people in the U.S. alone could have the disease with an annual cost of as much as $700 billion.

Clearly the stakes in the race to find a cure for Alzheimer's Disease could not be higher, and Shenk's account of this race is not only riveting but deeply disturbing for what it has to say about the politics and economics of scientific inquiry in the 21st century.

It wasn't until the 1970's that the medical profession began to take Alzheimer's seriously as a disease. With life spans increasing dramatically, it became impossible to ignore and with the Baby Boomers knocking at old age's door, the situation is desperate. Clearly, the profitability of finding a cure is at the forefront of the corporatization of science. With all those Baby Boomers primed for dotage, you can imagine the profits to be had.

In July 1999, the Dublin, Ireland-based corporation Elan Pharmaceutical announced that it had developed an antibody vaccine that not only prevented the development of plaques in mice but also eliminated them. Plaques and tangles have become known as the deadly calling cards of the Alzheimer's brain. Unfortunately Elan has been obstructionist in its handling of the situation, not only refusing to share its research with other scientists, but actually suing them for patent infringement on its genetically engineered mice.

More breakthroughs have followed Elan's but the big test will be to see if what works in mice will work in humans. Tests on humans have begun since this book was published so more chapters in the Alzheimer's saga remain to be written.

Shenk reflects almost romantically on the disease as a function of growing old. In the endŠ.."Defeating Alzheimer's will be like defeating winter. Once it is gone, we'll face less hardship, but we'll also have lost one of life's reliable touchstones." "The Forgetting" is a must-read for anyone interested in the wretched ailment that is Alzheimer's disease. Taken from a book Review by David Rubien, staff writer; San Francisco Chronicle

* An SRES Article.



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