Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1990 on the cusp of the so-called Alzheimer’s epidemic, Edward Schneider and Jack Guralnik (1990, 2335) warned readers that the aging population would have a deleterious impact on the price of health care. “Successful containment of these healthcare costs,” they noted, “will be related to our ability to prevent and/or cure those age-dependent diseases and disorders that will produce the greatest need for long-term care.” Three decades later, the pressure to prevent or cure dementia continues unabated, swathed in the apocalyptic predictions of politicians such as former UK prime minister David Cameron, who described dementia as one of the “greatest threats to humanity” and argued for increased investment in bio-technologies and global pharma to meet the “dementia challenge” (Department of Health Older People and Dementia Team 2012, 15–16).

Burke, L. (2020). Spectres of unproductive life: The aging-disability-dementia complex. In K. Aubrecht, K., C. Kelly & C. Rice (Eds.), The aging-disability nexus (pp. 35–50). UBC Press.