In my 2015 Philadelphia Inquirer essay, I suggest that Still Alice, the bestselling novel and 2014 film, is not the right story to help us understand Alzheimer’s disease or how we’ll live with it in the 21st century.
The history of the 20th century is the history of the triumph of autonomy, and Alzheimer’s disease is a disease because it takes this away. As the U.S. embarks on a national plan to prevent it, these efforts, however, are going to challenge the very same autonomy we wish to protect.
