15 Apr “Turning to Books to Grasp the Most Ungraspable Disease” – The New York Times
“When my family moved to the United States in 1976, the country was in the midst of what could be called the Great Alzheimer’s Awakening. Research conducted that decade suggested that dementia, far from being rare, was actually one of the leading causes of death in American society — just behind heart disease and cancer.
Since that time, as more and more of us survive into old age, that finding has taken on the texture of fact. Today, most everybody knows someone with dementia. By the midpoint of this century, the condition is expected to afflict more than 15 million Americans and more than 100 million people worldwide, likely overtaking cancer as the second most common pathway to death. In polls, older individuals say they fear dementia more than cancer. It is more feared than death itself…”
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