Ethics: New Hope for Alzheimer's Victims

Even as Janet Adkins committed suicide, the short history of Alzheimer's disease seemed to be entering a new, more hopeful phase. First, it will soon be easier to identify Alzheimer's earlier and more accurately, thus easing the needless anxiety the elderly often feel at any lapse of memory or momentary confusion. (Doctors admit that their diagnoses of the disease are wrong about 30% of the time.) Second, Alzheimer's finally appears to be yielding to treatment, though a cure could be many years away.

Last week researchers at Abbott Laboratories near Chicago announced they had developed a new biochemical test that may...

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