Colleen Carroll Campbell, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is the author of The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy (Loyola, 2002). She is working on a book based on her father’s experience of Alzheimer’s disease, and this New Atlantis article provides an outstanding overview of her research into the subject. There is no question that Alzheimer’s is becoming an increasingly important health care issue:

. . . [E]very once in awhile, we face a situation that forces us to collectively consider what it means to be human persons who grow old, suffer, and die.
The looming Alzheimer’s epidemic is just such a situation. This disease embodies everything we fear most about aging — weakness and dependence, humiliation and oblivion. Its insidious onset and relentless progression have penetrated our collective consciousness, and nearly half of Americans over the age of 35 know someone personally whose brain has been ravaged by it. As Americans are living longer and more physicians are recognizing dementia as a disease to be diagnosed, Alzheimer’s is claiming more victims. Some 4.5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s today, more than double the number who had the disease in 1980. Alzheimer’s has become the eighth-leading cause of death in America, and its impact is expected to mushroom as 77 million Baby Boomers head into retirement. By 2050, if no cure is found, 16 million Americans could have Alzheimer’s. As they bid their long goodbye — Alzheimer’s can take up to 20 years to run its devastating course — we will no longer be able to ignore the human questions raised by this disease. Such questions, about the basis of our human dignity and our identity as persons, cannot be answered by science or technology. We must grapple with them the old-fashioned way, drawing on both reflection and lived experience to find the meaning in this way of dying.

For anyone dealing with the onset of dementia in a loved one, this piece is essential reading. Read the entire article.