Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

 Last year the FDA approved of an Alzheimer's drug named Leqembi, created by a US biotech firm and a Japanese counterpart in concert. The two companies were: Biogen and Eisai.  Biogen is a Massachusetts based mid-sized biotech firm.  This year a much larger company -- larger than either of those two separately or together -- looks ready to receive FDA approval for a similar drug, one that like Leqembi targets amyloid plagues in the brain thought to be central to the disease process. Eli Lilly should get approval for its Donanemab. Why is Alzheimer's treatment such a hot subject for profit-hungry pharmaceutical concerns?  In part because people, around the world, are living longer. Medical and public health improvements mean that more people live long enough to become victims of this horrible late-life malady.  At any rate, the interest of these three companies IS good news for sufferers.  Eli Lilly in particular has the ability to scale up in ways that are ...

An age seems to take a particular disease as a sort of emblem. One disease serves as greatest fear and most intensely over-used metaphor. I think of consumption for much of the 19th century, polio for the early part of the 20th, AIDS for later in  the 20th. Now, perhaps ... Alzheimer's. One point you may have gleaned from my short list is that the emblematic disease ceases to be emblematic when it becomes curable. It can't be a metaphysical bugaboo any longer once it begins the fade into a lesser status as a manageable health concern. Alzheimer's certainly qualifies on this account.  It also qualifies by virtue of the way it attacks an individual's identity, taking it away piece by piece -- in a century that seems intent on attacking personal identity from all directions even without literal organic assistance. It attacks our identity because as humans our identity is one with certain sorts of continuity within this stream of consciousness. Knowing you...