ICYMI: A September 2015 Right Side Forum with Armstrong Williams featured USA2 co-founders George and Trish Vradenburg and board member Meryl Comer. The show highlighted the impact of Alzheimer’s on families and underscored the need for action now. 

MUST READS 

An October 6, 2015 The Guardian article reported that dementia scientists in the UK are leaving the field “in droves." According to the article, “Our latest review at the Alzheimer’s Society has found that five times fewer researchers choose to work on dementia than cancer, and 70% of those that complete a PhD on dementia no longer work in the field after just four years. Attracting and retaining researchers, clinicians and health professionals to work in dementia research must be a high priority for the UK if it is to tackle the growing health challenge.”

An October 6, 2015 MIT News article reported that “MIT researchers are developing a computer system that uses genetic, demographic, and clinical data to help predict the effects of disease on brain anatomy.” According to the article, “In their experiments, the researchers used data from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, a longitudinal study on neurodegenerative disease that includes MRI scans of the same subjects taken months and years apart.”

An October 5, 2015 The Washington Post article by Ronna Edelstein profiled her father’s decline before his death and her decision to move him into and out of a nursing home. According to Edelstein, “Then, during the last week of October, Dad became a stranger, babbling incoherently and getting frustrated when I couldn’t understand him. He refused to drink his morning coffee — more cream than coffee — or eat his favorite chocolate ice cream. He often closed his eyes, as if he could no longer handle seeing me, his daughter, feeding him, showering him and cleaning him as if he were an infant. Other times, he stared at me, as if he knew death waited for him and he wanted to have the memory of my face to take with him. Sometimes I cried as I witnessed his decline; other times I waited in silence for him to return, or I gently prodded his memory with stories of the past. But each time he rallied, I knew it would be short-lived.”