Alzheimer's disease is a progressive brain disease that produces mental deterioration. Its symptoms, which include increasingly poor memory, personality changes, and loss of concentration and judgment, are caused by the death of brain cells, and a decrease in the connections between those cells that do survive. The disease affects approximately four million persons in the United States. Although most victims are over age 65, Alzheimer's disease is not a normal result of aging. Medication can relieve some symptoms but there is no effective treatment or cure. Its cause is unknown.

People have long assumed that physical and mental decline were normal and unavoidable features of old age. Such deterioration was called senility. As recently as the early 1970s, much of the public and many physicians and nurses were not familiar with Alzheimer's disease. It was not until the 1980s that scientists realized that Alzheimer's disease was the...