Be heard here first: A strategic voice for Alzheimer's advocacy

t A s p I j f m a c Readers of Alzheimer’s & Dementia do not need to be ersuaded that Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most serius public health crises facing our nation. The enemy within s the lack of general public awareness about the nature of he disease, its sadistic and debilitating effect on patients nd caregivers, where the science is today, and the range of bstacles that paralyze the timelines for breakthrough therpies. We have too often tended to talk among ourselves in cientific jargon and coded terms of personal suffering that re meaningless to most of America. What is most striking is the length to which families go ot to have their loved one tagged with a diagnosis of lzheimer’s. Ironically, they feel less stigma attached to wide array of dementing illness—all with signature emory loss—and reluctantly acknowledge those sympoms at the end stages of other chronic diseases like heart isease, diabetes, depression, Down’s syndrome, amyorophic lateral sclerosis, Huntington’s disease, and Parinson’s disease. From a strategic perspective, we need o embrace across brain diseases if we are to head off an pidemic that will decimate and render our generation indless. In fact, it is the very complexity and intensity of the oming Alzheimer’s epidemic that force us to stake out a articular focus through professional commitment, personal ragedy, or both. The hard reality is that our individualized esponses might not be sufficient. We become too distracted nd overwhelmed to deal with Alzheimer’s in its fullest anifestation and forfeit our responsibility to lend cohernce to a national strategy. It is not an uncommon response. Immunologists begged cquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) activists uring the 1980s to take their protests elsewhere so they ould focus on isolating the virus, just as those stricken with he disease insisted that the politics of exclusion be attacked rom all corners, political or otherwise. The complexity of Alzheimer’s as a scientific, economic, ocial, moral, and public policy issue resists the communiations of easy sound bites. Mourning the past is no longer c