Real Estate Matters Jan 2002

The public is increasingly using the Administration on Aging's (AoA) nationwide Eldercare Locator service to find programs and supportive services to help them care for an older member of their family in their homes and communities. The average number of calls increased 15.3 percent from 9,043 each month in fiscal year 2000 to 10,425 each month in fiscal year 2001.

Many callers are long-distance caregivers looking for services and agencies to assist their loved ones, relatives, or friends who live in another town or state.

As more aging "baby boomers" find themselves caring for frail older family members, they often turn to the internet when traditional information resources are not available. This finding prompted the AoA to launch an on-line version of the Eldercare Locator on the web. This new on-line service can be accessed at www.eldercare.gov. The website will initially provide consumers with basic contact information about elder service agencies in the state and local area requested by zip code. It will gradually expand to provide links to the full range of services now available by telephone. The toll-free number is 800-677-1116 and is answered Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern Time.

The National Association of Realtors announced in December that existing home sales reached a near-record total, despite the now official national recession, the economic fallout from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, depressed consumer confidence and Congressional inaction on the hoped for economic stimulus package.

NAR Chief Economist, Dr. David Lereah said home sales have defied projections. "The housing market is proving to be much more resilient than most analysts expected. Sales will be just shy of the all-time record for existing home sales, which was 5.21 million transactions in 1999. In addition, new home sales will set a new record this year. It doesn't get much better than this," he said.

Lereah expects the 30-year fixed mortgage interest rate to rise gradually to 7.2 percent by the second half of 2002, after bottoming-out at an average of 6.7 percent for the fourth quarter of 2001. "Even with the uptick in mortgage interest rates, these are still relatively low rates and we expect favorable affordability conditions to prevail in 2002," he said.

David Shenk's book, "The Forgetting: Alzheimer's Portrait of an Epidemic" provides some interesting statistics and insight into memory and the brain. According to Shenk, five million Americans have Alzheimer's. Beginning in 2011, the first of the baby boomers will turn sixty-five and start to unravel in significant numbers. By 2050, about 15 million people in the U.S. alone could have the disease with an annual cost of as much as $700 billion. Clearly the stakes in the race to find a cure for Alzheimer's Disease could not be higher, and Shenk's account of this race is not only riveting but deeply disturbing for what it has to say about the politics and economics of scientific inquiry in the 21^st century.

It wasn't until the 1970's that the medical profession began to take Alzheimer's seriously as a disease. With life spans increasing dramatically, it became impossible to ignore andwith the Baby Boomers knocking at old age's door, the situation is desperate. Clearly, the profitability of finding a cure is at the forefront of the corporatization of science. With all those Baby Boomers primed for dotage, you can imagine the profits to be had. In July 1999, the Dublin, Ireland-based corporation Elan Pharmaceutical announced that it had developed an antibody vaccine that not only prevented the development of plaques in mice but also eliminated them. Plaques and tangles have become known as the deadly calling cards of the Alzheimer's brain. Unfortunately Elan has been obstructionist in its handling of the situation, not only refusing to share its research with other scientists, but actually suing them for patent infringement on its genetically engineered mice. More breakthroughs have followed Elan's but the big test will be to see if what works in mice will work in humans. Tests on humans have begun since this book was published so more chapters in the Alzheimer's saga remain to be written.

Shenk reflects almost romantically on the disease as a function of growing old. In the end….."Defeating Alzheimer's will be like defeating winter. Once it is gone, we'll face less hardship, but we'll also have lost one of life's reliable touchstones."

"The Forgetting" is a must-read for anyone interested in the wretched ailment that is Alzheimer's disease.

Taken from a book Review by David Rubien, staff writer; San Francisco Chronicle

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