快猫短视频

The Forgetting by David Shenk, HarperCollins, 拢15.99, ISBN
0002571749

IN THE months after Ronald Reagan was diagnosed as having Alzheimer鈥檚
disease, he and his daughter Maureen would tackle complex jigsaw puzzles
together. 鈥淗e loves doing that,鈥� she said. 鈥淲hen I was a little girl he used to
tell me, 鈥楧o the border first.鈥� Now I sit there and say, 鈥楧ad, do the border
first鈥�.鈥� Over the years, the puzzles got simpler and simpler: the man who had
negotiated with Gorbachev to end the cold war was going through childhood in
reverse.

The neurological degeneration of Alzheimer鈥檚 disease uncannily mirrors the
stages of child development. By stage 6a of the disease, patients can no longer
dress themselves. By stage 7f they can no longer hold up their own heads. The
story of this unravelling is told plainly and movingly by David Shenk in The
Forgetting. He also tells of the disease鈥檚 discovery by Alois Alzheimer in 1906,
the continuing battle between those who blame protein tangles in brain cells and
those who blame plaques, and the tantalising promise of early trials of a
vaccine that destroys those plaques.

Anyone appalled by the possibility of losing their mind, or who has watched
another鈥檚 being stolen by Alzheimer鈥檚, should read this excellent book: I guess
that鈥檚 all of us.