In the 50 years or so that I've been in the field of the biology of aging, there has been a significant change that I have seen, not only in the meetings – the many dozens, if not hundreds of meetings I've attended worldwide – but also in the literature of the field, that Alzheimer's disease has, as I think I've put it even in print, become attached at the hip to aging. Why, I do not know. It's usually thought that because Alzheimer's disease is such a popular... area of popular discussion, and obviously care and concern, that it should be part of any discussion of the biology of aging. In my view, that's a non-argument, because there are more people who die in more definite terms from cancer and cardiovascular disease and stroke than die from Alzheimer's disease. As a matter of fact, if you do the math, if Alzheimer's disease is resolved as an alleged cause of death, even, then there will be an additional 19 days added to human life expectancy. So why Alzheimer's disease, alone, is often a part of meetings on biogerontology, or books written on biogerontology – not geriatric medicine, which is the study of the pathologies, the disease-associated pathologies of older people – then it's hard to understand why that attachment continues, and I'm often left bewildered by this development. If we're going to include Alzheimer's disease papers and interest in meetings on bio-gerontology, why ignore the other major causes of death – Alzheimer's is not a major cause of death – major causes of death, whose resolution would be far more significant.
