A former co-worker introduced me to this compilation of documentaries on the HBO website that centered around Alzheimer’s disease. HBO has put together some amazing images with an excellent introduction to what Alzheimer’s is and what scientists are doing in order to study the disease and either halt or reverse it’s progress. The films go from the personal aspects of living and caring for someone with Alzheimer’s to the academic scientific advances. HBO took a very realistic view of disease with this, it exemplifies how a most disease is not a one-dimensional problem to solve, but rather a multifaceted set of challenges that sometimes have no permanent solutoin for those involved with it.

Coverage of this sort would ideally be more common for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, for the media all too often portrays these diseases as having a cure just around the corner. The current sort of exposure unnecessarily romantizes the disease and the science behind it in unrealistic ways and eventually desensitizes the public as no real cure is found time and time again.

There is also a brief yet insightful TED talk on the upcoming neurological epidemic, which brings to light how neurodegenerative diseases will be the next “scientific frontier” in medicine. Ultimately the problems we are fighting are all linked to aging, but that shall be left for another post.