RT Article
T1 The Quest for Cure of "Alzheimer's": Reimagining the Goal by Changing Culture
JF The Hastings Center report
VO 55
SP 48
OP 56
A1 Whitehouse, Peter J. 1949-
A1 George, Daniel R. 1982-
A1 Riegal, Connor
A2 George, Daniel R. 1982-
A2 Riegal, Connor
LA English
YR 2025
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1937420132
AB 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.
K1 Indigenous perspectives
K1 Aging
K1 Bioethics
K1 Biomedicine
K1 Dementia
K1 Meaning
K1 Public Health
K1 Stories
DO 10.1002/hast.4992