Must reads

• An October 21, 2014 Washington Post profile provided a glimpse into the retirement planning process for a family dealing with Alzheimer's. According to the article, "We recently asked readers to tell us about their financial planning for retirement and promised to have experts review readers’ plans and offer advice. One of the first responses we received was from Betsy Campana, 63, who works fulltime as a pharmacist at a hospital in Milford, De., where she and her husband moved after he retired. Ken Campana, 72, is a retired meteorologist with the National Weather Service. The Campanas are relatively well off in many ways, but they face challenges, including the cost of Ken’s care for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases in a long-term care facility and Betsy’s concerns about how much longer she will be able to work."
• In Case You Missed It: An October 20, 2014 The Pharma Letter article reported that "a workgroup of nearly 40 Alzheimer's researchers and scientists says the research milestones in the US government's National Plan to Address Alzheimer's Disease must be broadened in scope, increased in scale, and adequately funded in order to successfully achieve this goal."
• An October 20, 2014 Shelton Herald article reported on Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro's commitment to biomedical research and medical research funding. According to the article, "Joined by representatives of the local biomedical research industry on Monday in New Haven, DeLauro said she has introduced the Accelerating Biomedical Research Act to affirm “that biomedical research is an important priority.” The legislation would allow current budget caps to be adjusted for increased NIH spending, said DeLauro, a Democrat in her 12th term. “The spread of Ebola in America is on everyone’s minds right now,” DeLauro said. “It can be contained in nations like America that have a strong public health infrastructure. “But we would be in a better position if we had not cut the NIH’s budget over the last four years,” she said. “Cutting medical research has an incalculable cost, when life-saving discoveries are never made.”"
• An October 20, 2014 WNPR article highlighted the impact of budget cuts on researchers in Connecticut, including Alzheimer's research at Yale. According to the article, "The decline in total NIH funding has impacted not only cancer researchers, but also scientists chasing other illnesses. At Yale, researcher Amy Arnsten, a professor of neurobiology and psychology who is exploring causes of Alzheimer’s disease, said that about 90 percent of her grant requests have been rejected in the past several years. “I had a program project grant that had funding for many labs to work together to try to figure out what makes the aging brain so vulnerable,” Arnsten said. Because of the funding reductions and pressure on the NIH to maintain a large number of smaller grants for individual labs, “there was very little funding left in the pot for Program Projects,” which are multi-site collaborations. “It makes it much harder to work together with researchers who have different skills but are interested in the same ideas – which is the approach you need to solve big problems like Alzheimer's,” Arnsten said."