Event Description
Symposium: The Changing Face of Alzheimer’s Disease, Revisited
Historical, anthropological, and clinical perspectives.
Overview: Almost everyone knows someone who is suffering from dementia and many are labeled with the diagnosis Alzheimer’s disease. Each year, the Alzheimer’s Association cites growing numbers of affected people to emphasize the societal and economic costs of the so-called “Alzheimer’s epidemic.” It attributes the “changing face of Alzheimer’s,” which has gone from a formerly rarely diagnosed disease to a major health care problem, to a number of factors, including longer life spans and more early diagnoses. At the same time, researchers and health professionals have deep disagreements about what conditions should and should not count as “Alzheimer’s disease.” Are Mild Cognitive Impairment and Minor Neurocognitive Disorder prodromal stages, pre-clinical symptoms, or risk factors of Alzheimer’s? Can the disease be separated from non-pathological forms of age-associated cognitive decline? Is it reasonable to conceptualize Alzheimer’s disease as a single disease entity? What are alternatives to this categorical thinking—in history, in our present time, and for the future? And how can and should our society adapt to the challenges presented by brain aging in the 21st century?
Presenters:
Jesse Ballenger, "Medicalization and its discontents: Aging and Alzheimer's Ne(ur)oliberalism" - Associate Professor, Health Administration, Drexel and currently a visiting scholar at the Institute of the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University.
Daniel George, "Adapting to dementia in society: A challenge for our lifetimes and a charge for public health" – Assistant Professor, Medical Humanities, Penn State.
Jason Karlawish, "The House of Alzheimer's Disease" - Professor of Medicine, Medical Ethics and Health Policy, and Neurology. University of Pennsylvania, Penn Memory Center.
Lara Keuk, "Beyond conceptual history. The clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's desease around 1910." - Research Scholar and Society in Science-Branco Weiss Fellow, Humboldt University Berlin, Department of History currently a visiting scholar at Princeton.
Peter J Whitehouse, Discussion - Professor of Neurology, Case Western Reserve University; Strategic Advisor in Innovation, Baycrest Health Center and Professor of Medicine, Institute of Life Course and Aging, University of Toronto; President, Intergenerational Schools International.
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