On 2009-07-16 John Thorndike, Athens, OH United States wrote:
First a complaint: the book is repetitious. The first fifty pages, in particular, could have been cut by half, as the authors´ central message is repeated, and repeated again.
Nonetheless, that message is vivid and germane for anyone looking after someone whose brain is under attack--or simply aging, as Peter Whitehouse and his cohort Daniel George put it. I only wish I´d read The Myth of Alzheimer´s when I was taking care of my father in the last year of his life. My father´s diagnosis, a common one I´m sure, was ´Advanced second-stage dementia, most likely caused by Alzheimer´s.´ I think Whitehouse´s book would have confirmed my own instincts: that medications were unlikely to be of much help to my father, and that my job was to care for him, allowing him as much dignity as I could offer and as much warmth as he´d accept. He was prescribed Aricept and I gave it to him, but it seemed a frail defense against a powerful tide of memory loss and confusion.
As Whitehouse puts it, most people in the Alzheimer´s empire know that ´there is no singular disease called `AD,´ and that it is a complex, scientifically imprecise social construct that may never be cured.´ And because of this, we would do better to focus our efforts on enlightened care than to pour all our money and attention into finding a cure for this little-understood disease--if indeed Alzheimer´s is a disease at all, rather than simply an effect of brain aging.
In the last three decades, establishing cognitive deterioration and disability in the elderly as a disease, rather than the result of a natural process, has been vital to both researchers and drug companies. As Whitehouse explains it, ´In order for their research to be taken seriously by those who controlled the public coffers, it was clear that their efforts had to be targeted at something other than the vague process of aging. Their work had to be focused on something real and immediate, something awesome and imminent--a specific disease worthy of massive research efforts into its cause and cure, a `disease of the century.´´
It helps, when making these charges, that Whitehouse is clear about his own role through the eighties and nineties, as one of those neuroscientists who embraced and formulated Alzheimer´s as a disease, almost as a plague. He has since seen the light, and is extremely persuasive about it. There is much science and clear history in this book, and a great deal of common sense, as well. We have been sold, he claims, a dire vision of dementia, with the promise of an eventual cure--yet in thirty years we have made almost no progress toward that cure. What we need to do, Whitehouse explains, is take care of patients with cognitive decline, and keep them as involved in the world as possible. Our bodies break down and our minds break down, and there is much we simply have to live with. We can keep studying the problem of dementia, but in the meantime there are patients to be looked after. . And summed up by saying Brain Aging and ´A Disease of the Century´. Currently The Myth of Alzheimer´s: What You Aren´t Being Told About Today´s Most Dreaded Diagnosis has an overall rating of 10 over 10.
The Myth of Alzheimer´s: What You Aren´t Being Told About Today´s Most Dreaded Diagnosis can also be found in the following searches:
St. Martin´s Griffin claimed Dr. Peter Whitehouse will transform the way we think about Alzheimer’s disease. In this provocative and ground-breaking book he challenges the conventional wisdom about memory loss and cognitive impairment; questions the current treatment for Alzheimer’s disease; and provides a new approach to understanding and rethinking everything we thought we knew about brain aging.The Myth of Alzheimer’s provides welcome answers to the questions that millions of people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease – and their families – are eager to know: Is Alzheimer’s a disease?What is the difference between a naturally aging brain and an Alzheimer’s brain?How effective are the current drugs for AD? Are they worth the money we spend on them? What kind of hope does science really have for the treatment of memory loss? And are there alternative interventions that can keep our aging bodies and minds sharp?What promise does genomic research actually hold? What would a world without Alzheimer’s look like, and how do we as individuals and as human communities get there?Backed up by research, full of practical advice and information, and infused with hope, THE MYTH OF ALZHEIMER’S will liberate us from this crippling label, teach us how to best approach memory loss, and explain how to stave off some of the normal effects of aging.“I don’t have a magic bullet to prevent your brain from getting older, and so I don’t claim to have the cure for AD; but I do offer a powerful therapy—a new narrative for approaching brain aging that undercuts the destructive myth we tell today. Most of our knowledge and our thinking is organized in story form, and thus stories offer us the chief means of making sense of the present, looking into the future, and planning and creating our lives. New approaches to brain aging require new stories that can move us beyond the myth of Alzheimer’s disease and towards improved quality of life for all aging persons in our society. It is in this book that your new story can begin.´ -Peter Whitehouse, M.D., Ph.D.
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