This is from the New York Times Magazine of December 9th, in the annual article on New Ideas of the Year. The articleis about the need to have an early warning for Alzheimer's Disease by telephone in order to test new treatment modalities. Good idea I would say.
Now this article was in the New York Times, written by a staff reporter, a coveted position among all of those who strive to make it in the world of journalism. No slackers here, rather the creme of the crop, matched by editors who check out what they write, unlike this site, where anyone with a computer and some time on their hands gets to shoot out their ideas into the blogisphere.
So what is the disease I'm talking about? It's not Alzeimer's, it is......
STUPIDITY, blind stunning ignorance, made all the more meaningful by the venue it was printed in.
I lived with my mother's Alzheimer's, and as I approach the age when she first started to decline, it is what I fear the most in my life. More than somatic disease and far more than just death, where it is all over. Losing my capacity to engage in the world, my ability to share what I have to express, is what I dread.
Several years ago, the Times Science section had an article about Mild Cognitive disorder, which we old folks call CRS, or "can't remember shit." We joke about it in spite of our dread. But this article described the mild symtoms and then concluded, those with this "disease" have a 25% chance of getting Alzheimer's within the next year.
My letters to the editor, to the publisher, went unanswered. The statistic was absurd, but no one at the Times cared. Oh how I pity those oldsters who didn't know that this was utter B.S. Oh, I did get a letter to the Science Times on this subject published a few years ago, describing how what we fear is the loss of human connection more than anything, but they never corrected that error, in spite of the emotional stress it may have caused.
Now I have a new one to share with you from the article I cited above.
A welcome second use of the trial: screening. Cummings suggests check-ups beginning at age 55, since the odds of getting Alzheimer’s double every five years at that point: 2 percent of 65-year-olds have Alzheimer’s, 4 percent of 70-year-olds and so on. By age 85, one in three people have the disease.......
O.K math junkies among us, let's do this together. 2% at age 65 would be 4% at 70, so far so good. And by age 85 it is close 32% based on this rule. Now, the chances of an 85 year old living to 95 in America is actually pretty high based on current actuary tables, around one out of eight will make it.
So the Times says their chance of getting Alzheirmer's disease is 32% times 2 to the second power, or 128%. Got that Pop, you are screwed. If you manage to live to the mid nineties, the authoritative New York Times tells you there is statistical certainty, PLUS 28% that you will have the big A.
No, the certainty is not that the very old will lose their cognitive ability. What is certain is that too many who write for the New York Times are without the rudimentary quantitative skills expected of a Junior High School newspaper. And their editors seem to share these same limitations.
And damn it, this is not trivial. There are millions out there for whom fear of dementia is serious and troubling stuff. This kind of sloppy, careless writing is simply unforgivable. Oh, and if you want to read a more accurate description of prevalence of Alzheimer's heres one(note second paragraph) from the very same newspaper.
I would have written this to the Times, but somehow, I don't think it would ever have been read, much less printed.