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Cayla McNally's picture

How Did We Get Here?

Submitted by Cayla McNally on Sun, 03/25/2007 - 7:25pm.

After reading an article on how Alzheimer’s disease will grow to “epic proportions” as Americans grow older, I have only one real question: why? What has happened over the last century that would cause such an apparently drastic increase in the disease?

As of now, over five million Americans are suffering from the disease, which is a 10 percent increase from five years ago and a 50 percent increase from 1980. It is also affecting more and more people under 65 years of age, and the amount of Alzheimer’s related deaths has risen by a third between 2000 and 2004.

What has changed in the human dynamic over the last fifty years or so that has increased the scope of the disease? This seems to me a very good example of the nature-nurture controversy; has something within us changed, or has the society that we live in affected us so negatively as to make us ill?

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