Justice O'Connor Speaks Out on Alzheimer's

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor testifies this morning on Capitol Hill before the Senate Special Committee on Aging at a hearing looking into the "breakthroughs and challenges" of Alzheimer's disease. Check here for a link to webcast of the hearing beginning at 10:30. O'Connor will speak from her own experience dealing with her husband John's worsening case of Alzheimer's.

In advance of the hearing, ABC News' Jan Crawford Greenburg interviewed O'Connor in a segment aired this morning on Good Morning America. How is O'Connor's husband doing? "Not well," O'Connor told Greenburg. Now living at a facility in Arizona for Alzheimer's patients, he has lost the ability to read, making care more difficult. "It is an enormous loss over time," she said, to see her husband "disappear, in effect." His bout with the disease began 18 years ago, and first became noticeable, she said, when "he couldn't remember the punchlines of his jokes."

Though "he can't have his brain restored," O'Connor is advocating more government funding for Alzheimer's research for the benefit of future victims of the disease, which afflicts more than 5 million people in the United States.

Comments

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I am one of the 10 million caregivers and I do believe my relative does have Alzheimer's Disease. But I also wonder if there are (or will be) cases of Mad Cow Disease (variant of Creutzfeld Jacobs Disease [vCJD} in humans) that are misdiagnosed in this country. Factory Farms, the cattle industries and slaughterhouses do not wish to test their cattle (and prevent smaller local farmers from testing, also, by law). Two percent or less of bovine are tested in the US, whereas Japan and Australia test 100 percent). vCJD is also a very horrendous brain disease and can only be diagnosed with an autopsy just like AD. Gruesome but true.