Alzheimer’s

A couple of months ago folks were in a dither about Ebola, especially folks who see themselves as the center of the universe, and in our day (or any other) that is too many.
Now, there is nothing wrong with having an ego. On the contrary, it is necessary. Ego, after all, is another word for self. Without one we wouldn’t exist. The folks we’re talking about at the moment are the kind whose idea of self is so inflated they will believe, for instance, that were the world to end it would have to happen when they are present to witness it, so they persuade themselves that some occurrence – all the calendars going from 19 to 20 fifteen years ago or the fulfillment of a Mayan prophecy in 2013 – means Apocalypse.

In the case of Ebola, this kind feared the disease would fly from West Africa direct, if nowhere else, to the handle of the grocery cart they grab at the market or the very elevator button they need to push in order to get to work.

The fear quickly became so widespread as to make Ebola a “threat”. So President Obama did what U.S. presidents do when there is a threat and they can’t launch a drone missile at it: send in troops. The troops were to do what was necessary to keep Ebola from spreading to U.S. malls and office buildings. Of course before they could arrive in Africa it was clear it wasn’t going to do that, thanks to lesser preventive measures. It didn’t matter. Mr. Obama had “done” something and everyone’s nerves were soothed.

Of course, too, other “threats” supplanted Ebola as more pressing in the public mind. One was the fear of renewed rioting in St. Louis with the potential of spreading from there to other places where the excitable “poor” live. This in the aftermath of the death last August of an “unarmed black teenager” who could be seen on a convenience-store security-camera tape seizing the store owner by his shirt collar and telling him (one presumes, and in language easily imagined) that he would take whatever he wanted free of charge.

The tape was a reminder of another “threat” that periodically grips the mass media and thereby the masses. Not surprisingly, however, the epithet bully was never applied to the “unarmed black teenager.” It is reserved for those who “harass” sensitive young gays.

But I digress.

This commentary is not about Ebola or any other imaginary “threat,” but a disease that does not merely threaten but promises to define the age a few decades from now as the Black Death did in Europe in late Medieval time. The subject is Alzheimer’s.

It has already taken a toll large enough that, chances are, it has touched the life of numerous readers as it has mine. My mother died of it. Now my stepfather is afflicted with it, as are three other persons I know – Alzheimer’s or Alzheimer’s-type dementia. It’s enough that I’ve added to my daily prayers one of thanks that I still have my memory.

The experts say that only one percent of 65-year-olds is hit by Alzheimer’s, but after 65 the chance of developing it more or less doubles every five years. Anybody who makes it to 85 will have no better than a fifty-fifty chance of avoiding it.

Eighty-five will seem a long way off to many readers. They may say to themselves, “By the time I get there, medical science will find a cure.” Maybe. Maybe not. The trouble is that just fifteen years from now, in 2030, the number of persons over 65 will double from what it is today. At that point there will be more than 75 million persons with Alzheimer’s worldwide. By 2050 there will be 135 million. Then there is the question of cost. Alzheimer’s care costs a lot. It is forecast that by 2050 it will come to $1 trillion per year in the U.S. alone. That’s without figuring for inflation. With the younger, working-age population already shrinking, what are the chances that the number left by 2050 will want to foot that bill?

My guess is they won’t do it. What will they do?

If you’re old enough to remember the 1960s, you will remember the kind of talk that preceded legalization of abortion in 1973. It was all about “compassion” and safeguarding the health of women. They had to be spared the danger of a “back-alley abortion.” Only after legalization did the advocates of life-prevention trumpet “freedom” and the “right to choose.”

With Alzheimer’s, what we’ll get is some woman testifying before a Congressional committee: “My wonderful father would not want to be the burden he has become to our family. It is not compassionate to make him continue to live in a way he would never choose.”

There may be something richly ironic about persons who live mainly for self falling prey to a disease that obliterates self, except: 1) it strikes others besides the notably selfish; and 2) all that is obliterated is memory. Neuroscientists contend we are our brain, but Christians know otherwise. There is more to being human than having a human brain, including one that goes so haywire it no longer seems to house memory.

That is one point to be made: We have to think and believe beyond “seems”. Admittedly, this can be hard to do when a loved one no longer recognizes us. I know from personal experience. However, that is not the main point I want to make here.

The pro-life movement, of which Catholics were always the heart, failed to foresee and strategize for the day that is now upon us when most abortions would not be performed surgically but by pharmaceutical means. Before it becomes as embedded in American culture and law as the killing of the preborn, we need to get a handle on killing at the other end of life on no grounds except we aren’t remembered and caring for the person who doesn’t remember costs a lot.

Maybe it will help if we reflect that it won’t take very long after our own death for nobody to remember us except God. For selfish reasons, if no other, it would pay to stay on His right side.