The Quest for Cure of "Alzheimer's": Reimagining the Goal by Changing Culture
This essay explores personal and cultural meaning in dementia through the respective stories of biomedicine, public health, and alternative worldviews, using Indigenous perspectives as a critical example. Since Alzheimer's visibility as a biomedical illness intensified in the 1970s, the disease...
| Subtitles: | Living With Dementia: Learning from Cultural Narratives of Aging Societies |
|---|---|
| Authors: | ; ; |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2025
|
| In: |
The Hastings Center report
Year: 2025, Volume: 55, Pages: 48-56 |
| Further subjects: | B
Biomedicine
B Aging B Bioethics B Stories B Meaning B Public health B Indigenous perspectives B Dementia |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | This essay explores personal and cultural meaning in dementia through the respective stories of biomedicine, public health, and alternative worldviews, using Indigenous perspectives as a critical example. Since Alzheimer's visibility as a biomedical illness intensified in the 1970s, the disease has generated powerful narratives of scientific cure that are now limiting public discourse and appropriate social and ecological action. In this essay, our approach is rooted in the recognition that stories in their many forms (oral, written, embodied, and visual) and their associated metaphors create the semantic webs of words and actions that endow human beings with meaning. New stories from less medicalized spaces can both challenge the often-unrecognized limits and damaging behaviors of profit-driven, scientific reductionism and revitalize public and ecological health approaches based on expanded worldviews of individual, social, environmental, and indeed planetary health. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1552-146X |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Hastings Center, The Hastings Center report
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1002/hast.4992 |
