
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


Early-onset Alzheimer's has stalked a poor extended family in Medellin, Colombia. The family carries a dominant gene that means that half are at risk. The disease strikes family members as young as 25 and by their 40s sufferers are in the grip of full-blown dementia. Alzheimer's is by and large a disease of the developed world, if for no other reason than that people in the developing world don't live long enough to suffer from it. Now by using the Colombian family to trial new drugs, researchers say they may be on the road to a global cure for Alzheimer's. Bill Law asks if this represents an unfair exploitation of desperate people - many of them barely literate - to benefit those in the West? Or is it a case of bringing hope to those in a hopeless situation?
By BBC Radio 44.7
7575 ratings
Early-onset Alzheimer's has stalked a poor extended family in Medellin, Colombia. The family carries a dominant gene that means that half are at risk. The disease strikes family members as young as 25 and by their 40s sufferers are in the grip of full-blown dementia. Alzheimer's is by and large a disease of the developed world, if for no other reason than that people in the developing world don't live long enough to suffer from it. Now by using the Colombian family to trial new drugs, researchers say they may be on the road to a global cure for Alzheimer's. Bill Law asks if this represents an unfair exploitation of desperate people - many of them barely literate - to benefit those in the West? Or is it a case of bringing hope to those in a hopeless situation?

7,711 Listeners

373 Listeners

885 Listeners

1,069 Listeners

5,547 Listeners

1,791 Listeners

961 Listeners

586 Listeners

1,735 Listeners

1,023 Listeners

2,102 Listeners

1,922 Listeners

502 Listeners

109 Listeners

48 Listeners

40 Listeners

419 Listeners

734 Listeners

235 Listeners

164 Listeners

70 Listeners

3,175 Listeners

730 Listeners

1,004 Listeners