Would you want to know?

Georgetown University scientists reported last week on what they believe to be a promising-not to mention easy and inexpensive-blood test for Alzheimer’s disease.

There is no cure for Alzheimer’s and no effective treatment. Some drugs may slow the disease, but nothing has been found to stop or reverse its devastating theft of identity, memory and ultimately life.

Alzheimer’s afflicts more than 5 million Americans, and those numbers by some accounts will triple by 2050. The odds are good that if you live into your 80s you will be laid waste by the disease or you will be caring for someone who is.

Would you want to know in advance?

Knowing you are going to face Alzheimer’s or a related form of dementia is the kind of information that is likely to change the way you live your life. Your bucket list would come into focus. But so would many more practical decisions. You would literally need to have your affairs in order before you could no longer put them in order.

Knowing, you might offer yourself for clinical trials to speed the research for treatment or a cure. And you could share your end-of-life decisions with someone you trust to carry them out. After all, this is a disease that robs you of the ability to control your own life.

But would you want to know?

If you knew, you might make healthier lifestyle choices, which seem to have a role in holding off the disease. If you knew, you could seek what treatment is available before symptoms are in full bloom.

But it could also change your sense of self. Those who have had the genetic test for Alzheimer’s, for example, and know they are at risk rate their memories worse than those who have the gene and don’t know it.

If others knew, it could change how they treat you, how they relate to you. And you would see that change in them.

But until then, would you want to know?

I asked Dr. Jeffrey Kahn, professor of bioethics and public policy at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, if he would want to know.

“If you could say with some certainty,” he said, “I would want to know. It would make me behave differently. I would probably live my life differently. I would want to do the things that I want to do before I could not do them. I would want to say the things to people that I want to say before I couldn’t say them.” -

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Susan Reimer is a columnist for the Baltimore Sun.

Editorial, Pages 12 on 03/17/2014

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