The Demented World

The Demented World

Well it’s not funny. The growing epidemic of dementia is starting to set off alarm bells all over the medical and health care community with good reason. More and more people are needing care for longer and longer periods of time, many need to be hospitalized or at the very least put be into fully supervised care homes for their own protection. There is no question that this is a huge financial blow to the health care system and it’s only the beginning. What with people living longer, the disease will reach epidemic proportions and take over the care costs of the whole health care system.

On that premise, researchers are now climbing into our brains to try and figure out how to stop this destructive activity. They are almost in panic mode. For years people have been doing research on cancer, heart and stroke, arthritis, degenerative spinal diseases, Parkinson’s etc. They’ve got the body covered from top to bottom and front to back in research. But until recently they’d forgotten about the brain. What’d they think that was for - some kind of lifetime warranty motor to make everything else work? I’m amazed!

In the grand scheme of things, dementia doesn’t really harm the victim. Oh, it does but not so he/she is aware of it. Of course, there is a relatively short period where the victim must cope with the loss of memory or basic intelligence. But that passes fairly quickly as memory disappears. Then the onus of care and control falls squarely on somebody else and the victim floats along in a vacuum, totally healthy and unconcerned.

That got me thinking. What if this spreads undetected to our governments and bureaucracies? What if this spreads to our scientists and medical people? It almost seems, judging by the results that it has already happened. It seems the world is being run by a bunch of ding-a-lings already. In fact, three cases have already been documented. Ronald Reagan, Boris Yeltsen, and Margaret Thatcher were all diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Just think – the three most powerful countries on the planet were run by Alzheimer’s patients. Holy crap! We’re already there! I notice the automakers coming up with designs to take the responsibility for driving and parking away from the driver and putting it on the car itself. Well, it’s pretty well an extension of the myriad of robotics that have taken over industry and our lives.

It leads to the potential conclusion that this then is a natural progression of the human drive to avoid doing what we are meant to do. The brain has finally figured out how to abdicate its responsibility to motivate the body to do things. It’s as though it’s said to itself; ‘Aw, to hell with it. I ain’t doin’ this anymore. You do it.’ So it blows all the white matter it contains all over itself and goes on cruise control while everybody else runs around looking after its owner. Pretty slick, I would say.

In the meantime, all those whose brains haven’t figured this out yet get to do the bull work of caring for the bodies, and the researchers have to figure out a way to put all this white matter back together again. I think this is a devious plot of mankind.

At least that is how it looks to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin’.