Learning To Live With Alzheimer’s

Alzheimer’s is predicted to be the defining disease of the baby boom generation. The incurable brain disorder destroys memory, comprehension, personality, and the ability to speak and function.

As America’s 78 million baby boomers turn 65, their risk of developing the disease significantly increases. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, 10 million, or one in eight baby boomers will get Alzheimer’s.

This week Here and Now presents a series of reports on Alzheimer’s. We begin with Dr. Ralph Kelly, a prominent researcher and former V.P. at biotech giant Genzyme Corporation, who was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s at age 59. With the diagnosis, Ralph’s active life as an executive came to a halt.

In part one of a week-long series, Here and Now gets inside the Kelly family life to learn how they cope with this disease. Ralph shares his firsthand experience with Alzheimer’s, and his wife Ruth talks about the challenges of living with someone who has the disease. Our first report is produced by Iris Adler.

WBUR.org: Fade To Darkness-The Age of Alzheimer’s

We welcome comments from all of our listeners. Post below. Please stay on topic and be civil. Comments may be moderated by us, but you are solely responsible for the content of your comments.

Diana Dillaber

http://www.media.wayne.edu/2011/12/23/treatment-with-light-benefits-alzheimers-patients-wayne
new research at wayne state university on how certain light helps alzheimer’s patients

http://www.memoryphotoart.com/ Sue@MemoryPhotoArt.com

Ms. Dillaber~ very interesting study re the use of cueing agents in the home environment of person’s with Alzheimer’s —- it is in line with my observations that person’s with dementia will be attracted to anything or anyone in the environment which will help them to attach meaning and purpose to their lives. I am always looking for creative means to evoke positive emotional responses that may help to improve the moment to moment quality of life of person’s with dementia and their care partners…

http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Peach/100002999972259 James Peach

Fifty-nine. Jesus.
Cynthia

I worked for Dr. Fretts in the 90′s and had the pleasure of meeting Ralph Kelly at that time. I also worked for Ruth Fretts at Beth Israel. This is such a sad story. My thoughts and prays are with both Ralph and Ruth.
hshields

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and sporadic Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (sCJD) are sister prion diseases, transmissible, infectious by medical equipment, (scopes, etc.) dental and eye equipment, blood, urine, feces, saliva, mucous (aerosols: possibly by coughs & sneezes) Doctors frequently misdiagnose AD and sCJD one for the other. The symptoms and neuropathology are almost identifical.

Right now the US is in the middle of a raging, always fatal, prion disease epidemic: There are over 6 million victims of AD and 1 million Parkinson’s Disease victims, with a new AD case every 69 seconds !

For years, Nobel Laureate Stanley Prusiner (UCSF) and other scientists have said Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and Parkinson Disease (PD) in humans are transmissible prion/protein misfolding diseases:

(see research confirming AD is a prion disease – http://www.alzheimers-prions.com/
http://sludgevictims.com/pathogens/ALZHEIMERS-CJD-samepriondisease.doc

Recent research (October 2011) by Dr. Claudio Soto, et al, University of Texas Medical School, has confirmed earlier research which found injecting Alzheimer’s brain material into mice brains caused infectious prion disease.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111004113757.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29

AD and sCJD victims shed prions in their urine and feces. Sewage treatment does not inactivate prions – it concentrates them in the sewage sludge. The US EPA acknowledges that the landspreading of sewage sludge is also a pathway of prion risk for humans and animals (Mad Cow, CWD, etc.)
http://www.alzheimers-prions.com/

EPA NATIONAL WATER RESEARCH COMPENDIUM 2009-2014 lists PRIONS eight times
as an EMERGING CONTAMINANT of concern in sewage sludge “biosolids” , water and manure:
http://www.sludgevictims.com/prions/PRIONS-EPA-EMERGINGCONTAMINANTSINSLUDGEBIO.
pdf

“Could Alzheimer’s be infectious? ” http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/11/24/could-alzheimers-be-infectious/

SEE reply posted by:
Dr. Murray Waldman, coroner for the city of Toronto, Canada:
“In answer to the question how would Alzheimer’s (AD) be transmitted, I have written a book “Dying For A Hamburger” that hypothesizes that AD is spread by how we in North America and Europe feed and process meat, mainly beef.
If you study the rates of AD and its geographical distribution, you will find that rates start to soar when a country becomes meat eating (i.e. Japan and Korea in the 1960s) and rises even faster when it adopts a fast food culture (the US and Western Europe in the 50s and 60s) and remains low in vegetarian countries (India) and those without a processed meat industry or fast foods (equatorial Africa)…Murray “ hshields@tds.net Alton,NH