RIP, Scotty.

Of course, given that he had Alzheimers, he may have been dead by any useful definition for some time, just as Ronald Reagan was, even if the empty shell of the body continued to metabolize. In many ways, I fear this disease more than cancer, because it robs you and your loved ones of what is essentially you, while leaving them with an ongoing burden that can only be relieved by the final, physical death, which cannot come too soon once the mind is gone.

This, to me, is a powerful case for euthanasia. We may (and I suspect, will) come up with a cure for Alzheimers in the sense of preventing the damage, but once the damage is done, there's no repairing it--it's information death, which is actually much more final than metabolic death.

[Update on Wednesday evening]

How appropriate. They're beaming him up. So to speak.

With regard to irreversable damage, U of Minn researchers have shown memory recovery in mice suffering dementia:

http://betterhumans.com/News/News/tabid/61/News/941/Default.aspx

According to the press release linked in the article, the memory recovered wasn't in the sense of blank neural tissue--it was in actual remembrances, expressed as behavior. Good news.

Was that Alzheimers dementia, or some other form (the mice weren't deranged Bush haters, were they)?

"It's not that we discriminate against conservative lab mice, it's just that, as John Stuart Millrat noted, conservative mice are just too stupid."

BTW I met Mr. Doohan in the 1980s at my one and only ST convention. He was quite a nice man, and I'm sorry he and his family had to suffer through the Alzheimers process.

"Kill them! Kill them all!" (I trust I do no injustice to your point of view).

I lost 2 grand parents to that,its a horrible way to go.

I'm losing my mother to some sort of degenerative disease of the mind (senile dementia, Alzheimer's).

Yes, it's hard.

No, I wouldn't euthanize her. She isn't any Terry Schiavo. She can't learn much of anything new (including what nights we're having dinner together). But she is still capable of enjoying life.

What would I change if I was master of the universe? Or at least of the local area? I'd prefer to live in a friendly community where I could get enough help to allow my mother to live with me and have more freedom than she has in her assisted living facility. I suspect it would also be much cheaper than the assisted living. Oh -- this is considered a good assisted living facility.

I'm not terribly worried about my own mind. My uncle (who is 90) is sharp as a tack. It also seems that the more active you keep your mind (even just doing one crossword puzzle a day) drastically reduces your chances of getting one of these degenerative diseases.

So, yes, you're going to have to put up with me for another 30, 40, 50 years. And by then, who knows?

I plan to be tossed into orbit as well. I'm hoping by then we will have broadcast ability from our little capsules. Now should I play a song, or tell off those relatives I've left behind.

Euthanasia? Do you mean physician-assisted suicide, or the involuntary killing of certain poor unfortunate people because someone else has decided they would be better off dead? I don't know, but I don't think that James Doohan was so afflicted as to bring up suicide.

Of course James Doohan wouldn't want to commit suicide. My point is that James Doohan was perhaps already dead, in terms of all the things that really matter. There's no value in keeping a body breathing when there's no one home.

...and who gets to make THAT decision?

Presumably the family, and in fact himself, if he has a living will. I'd certainly set one up if I learned that I have Alzheimers.

It's really a hard thing to judge. In my mom's case, there is really is somebody home. It's just that she has extreme difficulty learning new things anymore. She clings to the familiar. I suspect if she was in some place where everything is familiar with significant numbers of friends and family around, she'd be doing much better. Even now people who meet her really like her -- and she likes them.

I don't know how Doohan was doing lately. His last public appearance was a year ago. Does anyone here have any reports of what he was like a year ago?

This is one of the things that makes these sorts of degenerative diseases so hard. There really is somebody home. It's just that some (not, by all means all) of their capacities are greatly diminished.

If, in 30, 40, 50 or more years I'm like my mom, I don't know what I would want. A very major factor would be the social circumstances I would find myself in.

When the lights go out, I want to be extinguished too. I couldn't imagine putting any family through an Alzheimer's ending. My wife and I have lovingly agreed to help the other one cross over if we are capable. We've outlived our children, our estate goes to charity. What's to live for in dementia? Until then, we're having a ball.