Newt Gingrich talks with Dr. Robert Redfield and Dr. Brent Beasley about breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s detection and treatment and the policy changes needed to bring them to patients.
For decades, an Alzheimer’s diagnosis offered patients and their families few options beyond preparing for the disease’s progression. That reality is beginning to change. New blood-based biomarkers can help identify Alzheimer’s before clinical dementia develops, while emerging treatments may slow its progression. For Dr. Brent Beasley, a physician diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at just 57, early detection and treatment became deeply personal. After cognitive decline cost him his medical career, a blood biomarker test helped lead to his diagnosis and treatment. Today, he describes a future for Alzheimer’s patients filled with far more possibility than existed even a decade ago.
Former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield believes this scientific progress demands an equally significant change in public policy. Drawing on lessons from the fight against HIV/AIDS, he argues that America must move from waiting for symptoms to routinely identifying Alzheimer’s earlier, expanding access to available treatments, and accelerating the development of new therapies. With millions of Americans already living with the disease and millions more family members affected as caregivers, the question is no longer simply whether science can change the trajectory of Alzheimer’s. It is whether Congress, CMS, and the health care system can move quickly enough to take advantage of the breakthroughs already underway.