Right now, more than five million Americans are suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. And when I use the word "suffering" I know what I am talking about. Last Friday, I watched my mother take her last labored breath after years of anguish, humiliation, physical pain and mental misery. In six years I saw the disease reduce her from a vivacious, funny pain-in-my-rear-end to a drooling, incoherent puddle. It may sound cruel, but it's only the truth; every so often someone would observe that it was as though she were dissolving right before our eyes.
Today the Obama administration announced a two year commitment of $156 million to fighting Alzheimer's Disease, which is very good news. Without a significant commitment of funds and energy to research for a cure for this unspeakably cruel disease we will see the number of Alzheimer's patients balloon to a staggering 16 million by 2050. There are currently 15 million caregivers providing over 17 billion hours of unpaid care to Alzheimer's patients; that number of caregivers will need to grow to 45 million or more in the same time frame in order to care for those afflicted. And believe me, each one of those 150 billion unpaid hours of care will feel like an agonizing lifetime to those giving it.
It doesn't take much to see that the cost to our country will be vast unless we can stem the tide. In 2011 the cost of care for Alzheimer's patients was $183 billion and it will rise to over $1 trillion within the next few decades, wreaking havoc on families and a health care system that will be already shuddering under the weight of the medical demands of an aging population.
However, speaking of financial costs feels to me beside the point to me at this moment, having just watched the way this disease took my mother. I don't know how long it will take for my family to climb out from under the feeling of powerlessness and sorrow that now weighs down our hearts, but at least we were in a financial position to ensure that our mother was well cared-for right to the end. I cannot imagine the agony we would have felt if money had been an obstacle to her care, as it is for so many families. I cannot imagine what it would be like to pick my head up from my pillow one sad, sad morning, and start the work of digging out from under a financial hole made by the demands of doing the right thing by the woman who brought us into this world.
Alzheimer's is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States and it is the only disease among the top ten for which there is no way to cure, prevent or even slow its progression. The suffering of patients and caregivers promises to balloon and even overwhelm us without a steadfast commitment to finding the secret to mitigating this horrible disease.
Last year both houses of Congress unanimously passed and the president signed the National Alzheimer's Plan for Action (NAPA). This was a huge victory for Alzheimer's advocates and today's announcement is a sign that the Obama administration is serious about turning the dream of NAPA into a reality. But quite honestly, it is not enough. We cannot rest until there is coherent a national plan to coordinate and evaluate all national efforts in Alzheimer's research, clinical care, community and home-based programs as well as outcomes from those programs.
Long ago my mother loved a poem by Seamus Heaney: "History says, Don't hope on this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime the longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme. So hope for a great sea-change.... Believe that a further shore is reachable from here. Believe in miracles and cures and healing wells." That's how she taught me to live, back when she could talk. And that's how I believe we can make a better future for those millions and their loved ones who will face the prospect of this hideous diagnosis.
Commit. Believe. Love. Lead. That's what we need from you, Mr. President. Hope and history can rhyme, but only if we continue to push for treatments, for better and fairer care, and yes, even for a cure.
Marie Marley: Alzheimer's and Psychoactive Medications -- A Controversial Decision for Caregivers
Sec. Kathleen Sebelius: We Can't Wait: Taking Action on Alzheimer's Disease
Fourth, note that even the interviewee indicates that the live inoculum used was forty years before Jenner’s and was nonetheless quite effective. That inoculum was likely developed without precious government involvement thereby demonstrating that cures are not dependent on government funding.
Fifth, even contemporary federal representatives are empowered to provide medical care to military personnel. What Mr Washington did for his troops was both legal and moral.
‘You are something, I guess you see a conspiracy theory around every corner, in every stethescope. I prefer reality. You have not provided any facts yet So here is the story, I have many MORE leading all the way to the 21st century. All you have is hot air and theories about who "benefits" from good medical care...’
If I see a conspiracy theory around every corner, then so do the reputable sources with which I regularly support my facts. Incidentally, here’s an excerpt from a publically traded company that profits from researching and producing smallpox vaccines:
‚In studies with Bavarian Nordic's new and innovative third-generation smallpox vaccine, IMVAMUNE® scientists from Bavarian Nordic have for the first time demonstrated a therapeutic effect of a smallpox vaccine, days after infection. With the current available first- and second-generation smallpox vaccines no evidence of a therapeutic effect has ever been shown in animal models. This discovery was recently published in the prestigious Journal of Clinical Investigation.‘
-- http://www.bavarian-nordic.com/investor/pressreleases/2008-04-10.aspx
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generation smallpox vaccines no evidence of a therapeutic effect has ever been shown in animal models. This discovery was recently published in the prestigious Journal of Clinical Investigation.‘
- http://www.bavarian-nordic.com/investor/pressreleases/2008-04-10.aspx
‘http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113543985
‘PS; Medical companies do NOT profit from curing diseases, they make money on treaments, owning treatment centers, diagnostic centers.'
That claim is demonstrably false, as the excerpt I posted above makes clear. According to Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary, a cure is, inter alia, is a kind of treatment:
'1 a : spiritual charge : CARE b : pastoral charge of a parish
2 a : recovery or relief from a disease b : something (as a drug or treatment) that cures a disease c : a course or period of treatment *take the cure for alcoholism* d : SPA 1
3 : a complete or permanent solution or remedy *seeking a cure for unemployment*
4 : a process or method of curing
–cure-less \-l*s\ adjective'
-- Merriam Webster´s Collegiate Dictionary, 2004, 11th edn. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 2004).
There are several issues to address in this connection.
First, the enfranchised town inhabitants voted to rebuild the hospital with local taxes. That’s a far cry from modern federal officials abusing federal tax funds, in flat violation of U.S. Constitution proper and reinforced by the tenth amendment, to fund for instance the NIH.
Second, all that aside, though what the town’s enfranchised voters did was not illegal, it was grossly immoral unless every single person whose tax money went towards building that hospital was in full agreement. If even one person was robbed because he disagreed, then a moral evil was committed. That the voters did it doesn’t make it right.
Third, the article never mentions how or whether the twenty sailors who torched the private hospital were punished or whether they were required to make reparations to the owners against whom they initiated force. This seems to be a matter of such complete, callous indifference to the authors that they don’t even mention it in passing.
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What this means in American is that reseach in drugs will get large investments. The disease causing way of life will be pushed aside and the useless treatment of circulation deprived damaged brains will take of the form of drugs.
The drugs will either not work or made things much worse which will have the entended consequence for creating more sick patients profits, more research racket thief of public funds and more useless and dangerous new drugs.
The need to treat the sick society way of life that produces lifestyle originated health breakdown will not be addressed.
If there were ever a pill that could make a populaition wake up to how destructive their way of life was it would be taken right off the market.
Mother is in her 8th to 9th year of Alzheimer's Disease. She is closer
to Ms. Disney's Mother than I usually let myself admit. It is totally true
how hard it is to watch a wonderfully bright, funny and very intelligent
lady lose all her cognitive functions. It is so cruel to the person with the
disease. It is also so very cruel to the family and the caregivers in the
home who strive to make their loved one comfortable, have their own
life & dignity AND yet; recognizing the hard truth that the person we
see on a daily basis, isn't the same quick, caring, loving soul that we
learned from & loved all of our lives. We strive to "do it all" BUT that
is eventually met with the realization that we can't do it all & are doing
Mother and ourselves a dis-service because she isn't going to be her
old self or feel better; nor are we going to have the strength or emotional
fortitude to hang in there. Money is an issue, sad but very true. We are
buried in dispair AND will continue on BUT we now must have Home
Health Care assistance to allow us to continue serving Mother - as she
had always served us.
Kudos to Ms. Disney by bringing more attention and another face to the
Alzheimer's victims - patients and families, alike.
finding ways to delay, ameliorate, and cope with alzheimer's syndrome is a very important
investment to make in the face of an aging populace.
My Father has Alz. and it is a devastating disease on so many levels. Cruel at the least.
I just went to see my 84-year old aunt yesterday. She's physically doing well and seems fine, mentally very alert and has good memory...just one little itsy-bitsy problem: she's hallucinating, seeing people who aren't there. Her mother, my grandmother, lived her last 10 years in a nursing home, vegetating away with no awareness of anyone. I worry that my aunt is following in my grandmother's footsteps.
It is a tragic disease, we must do more.