Alzheimer's and “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”

Amplify’d from www.alzheimersreadingroom.com

I bet, at first look, it seems strange for me to be writing about the new movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes on the Alzheimer’s Reading Room. However, after seeing this movie, not only do I think it is one of the best movies I have ever seen, I think it is an amazing social commentary about Alzheimer’s disease.

The story line is about a geneticist who was doing research on a drug for Alzheimer’s disease. The drug contained a virus that he was testing on chimps. One chimp showed a particularly good response to the drug, and she was singled out to be worked with. Her intelligence increased dramatically.

Then, we see the scientist at home. He is taking care of his father who has Alzheimer’s disease. The portrayal of the father is extremely realistic. His is quite advanced in the disease and has a hired caregiver at home when the geneticist is at work. We see the father lash out in frustration at the hired help, who then quits her job.

What I found most amazing was the realism about Alzheimer’s and Alzheimer’s research that was in the movie. The dad with Alzheimer’s was depicted painfully accurately. The resistance on the part of the imagined pharmaceutical company to producing something that would only help Alzheimer’s patients and could expose them to a lawsuit, felt all too real.

My own Alzheimer’s mice will be arriving in my lab this week. At one point during the movie my grandmother leaned over and whispered to me, “You better not create any super intelligent Alzheimer’s mice that want to take over the world.”

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