Film studies growing Alzheimer’s problem

By Frazier Moore

AP Television Writer

NEW YORK

In 2004, PBS aired a film about Alzheimer’s disease. The grim takeaway:

It’s incurable and deadly.

With the aging of the U.S. population (especially by the outsized baby-boom generation) the number of cases is skyrocketing accordingly.

The cost of this coming epidemic is destined to be financially ruinous, not only on an individual basis, but also as a public-health crisis nationwide.

That was then, in 2004. But the situation has grown only more dire, says an important new documentary, “Alzheimer’s: Every Minute Counts,” which airs Wednesday at 10 p.m. on PBS.

According to this program, there are now more than 5 million Americans with Alzheimer’s disease, with the number projected to soar by 55 percent by 2030, while future costs associated with it threaten to bankrupt Medicare, Medicaid and the life savings of millions of Americans.

“Alzheimer’s: Every Minute Counts” was produced and directed by Elizabeth Arledge, who a dozen years ago produced the Emmy-winning “The Forgetting: A Portrait of Alzheimer’s.”

That report mainly focused on the human tragedy of a degenerative brain disease that sentences each victim to a progressive loss of memory and sense of self and, over time, an inability even to swallow and breathe.

For her new documentary, Arledge has taken a different tack.

“This is not another examination of the heartache,” she explained recently from her Cambridge, Massachusetts, base as an independent filmmaker specializing in medicine and public policy. “Instead, it’s more about how this personal tragedy is now going to become a tragedy for the whole country if nothing changes in the trajectory of the disease. We look at the epidemic as a main character in the film.”

She recites a few of its harsh bullet points:

The sixth-largest cause of death in the U.S., Alzheimer’s is the only disease among the top 10 with no prevention, no treatment and no cure.

Given the number of people it affects — victims and caregivers — as it drags on for years, “it’s the most expensive disease in the country.”

While research has uncovered what Arledge says are “so many promising leads, so many intriguing clues,” funds allocated for research are at a level far below those for many other diseases. Battling Alzheimer’s, she sums up, is “100 percent about money.”

That said, “Every Minute Counts” puts human faces on this dilemma.