Introduction--Bio-cultural anthropology
Alzheimer's disease - an incurable degenerative disease of the central nervous system characterized by progressive loss of mental abilities (memory, language, logical thinking). The risk increases after 65 years. This book is a good example of bio-cultural anthropology. The subtle journey of hope, ambiguity, and modern bioscience is what is at stake in her book, “The Alzheimer Conundrum” by Margaret Lock. Margaret Lock, a notable medical anthropologist, is recognized for her work on the cultures, intersection of bodies and surroundings, investigation by notice to aging, transplantation of organs, and genomics, alongside other subjects.
Even with a lot of funds available for medical research, there has never been any discovery of a cure of Alzheimer, especially dementia. Margaret Lock tries to expose the dilemma set in the current work; to delay or stop Alzheimer’s disease by untimely finding a presymptomatic biological modification in fit individuals. The empirical description is welcome since it totals up to the literature for biomedical doubt(s), and sociological and anthropological researchers involved in multifaceted neurological disorders ought to study them.
Summary of a book
This book is all about Alzheimer Disease. It contains nine chapters dealing with different aspects of the disease like Prediction and Prevention, Risk, Alzheimer Genes, Chance Untamed and the Return of Fate, Transcending Entrenched Tensions, Living with Embodied Omens etc. The organization of the book is in two sections.
The first section tries to describe Alzheimer particularly on the ‘amyloid cascade’ hypothesis that will be well-known to the reader of modern sociological or anthropological effort on neuropsychiatric disarray. Lock investigated the homogeny of Alzheimer’s apprehension that was like a lot political and bureaucratic as biological (p.41). So far it is unclear what causes Alzheimer's disease and how it progresses. However, research in genetics, biochemistry, cell biology, and many experiments the scientists were able to raise a little veil of the secrecy over this issue. The unsuccessful aspiration for a ‘therapeutic “silver bullet”’ (p.48), and the final technocratic move to neuropathology (p.65) among others are also significant.
Lock’s description of the swing to Alzheimer’s ‘prevention,’ is the most convincing. In her study, she shows how a new analysis, the Mild Cognitive Impairment, signing up a new cohort of patients, and the generation of a bigger ‘at-risk’ inhabitants (p.79) as critical. Using the interview details among the at-risk patients, Lock noted how there has been little attention to ‘the reservations linked with the prediction of the outlook through biomarker testing.’ It also applies to the risks of producing unsettled ‘chronic anxiety’ when outlining ‘personified risk’ (p.77,p.93, p.98).
The second section of the book seeks to discuss the genetic indication for the amyloid hypothesis. As the author makes apparent, this research continues in the face of continuing indistinctness concerning the definite role of amyloid in the source of Alzheimer (p.154). With a distance, the mainly influential part and, not unintentionally, the chapter mostly depends on Lock’s personal interview data examining how individual in reality exist with ‘embodied omens’ of Alzheimer’s Disease (p.174). At this point, Lock demonstrate how several individual she spoke to were merely ‘indistinct about what accurately they should act with the information’ concerning their hazard (p.192).She also added how biomedical persistence, re- infer their threat during individual, ancestral narratives of inheritance and similarity: ‘I appear like my mom,’ one interviewee said., Further the person stated that would be no worry since the interviewee was sure of passing the risk. Lock explains that in the face of biomedical narratives; how person senses of selfhood and subjectivity linger surprisingly flexible– that narrative about relations, harmony, and care, are what persist to lead patients’ apprehension (p.201, p.206).
Margaret Lock wrote a critical book regarding Alzheimer. She affirms that the "stubborn conundrum" of the most identified subcategory of dementia and mostly things like its biology, grounds, and risk concerns are not known well. Lock establishes that the science of the disorder is presently as convincing as emotional accounts from caregivers and those undergo with Alzheimer's disease. In Locks recent work, she used eighty interviews with dementia specialist discussing how to interpret outpatient services and in the presence of Alzheimer’s-themed aspects, as well as the methodical captivation of neuroscientific and inherited Alzheimer’s contents.
Glenn Altschuler, in Psychology Today commented on this book stating, “it is Inclusive, convincing, and in-depth, The Alzheimer Conundrum present a helpful answer to media hype regarding 'silver bullets' that are about to happen and makes a significant input to our understanding of an achingly sad ailment that contact nearly all of us." (Bayley, 2013).
I feel that the book, “The Alzheimer Conundrum” will be essential for sociological and anthropological researcher concerned with an intricate neurological disorder. I have two criticisms concerning these issues. Primarily, I believe that the book is not persuasively composed. While Lock’s fascination in the scientific data/ writing is remarkable, there are as well countless extended passage exposure, at great span, the particulars of explicit articles, reply to those articles, and paper control of them, etc. The Long segment seems like literature reviews – and the audience longs for the unforeseen, individual detail. One of the chapters begins from Capitol Hill whereby a neuroscientist (NIH Administrator) and Joe Perry of Aerosmith, taking part in the ‘The period they are a-changing’. However right away upon noting this weird collection, Lock retrieves back into the scientific writing. One could expect a detailed analysis from an anthropologists’ eye for the factors with an emphasis on their ability to have weird agglomerations of current biomedicine in terms of politics, soft rock, and star perspectives
Secondly, uncertainty and vagueness are previously high up themes in social-science consideration to neuro-genetic. However, if Lock is comfortable to propose, in reaction, an analysis of reduction, what we are short of is any more motivated theory of ambiguity. Lock’s obligations are very well understandable: next to a reductionist bioscience ‘leaning chiefly to the progress of effective drugs.’ She asks for notice of ‘social, political and environmental aspect, together with poverty, discrimination, prejudice and racism’ (p.229, p.15).The book finishes with a call for changing our molecular look at ‘the execution of the community health program and the lessening of poverty and chronic discrimination,’ and so on. But further than such boilerplates wishes, if we’re obtainable to be aware of the modern scene of neurogenetic disarray, there is certainly much more to be thought about organization of vagueness in state-of-the-art bioscience, regarding the perseverance of molecular concentration by those organizations, and in relation to the continual re-adjudication of class of disease surrounded by and across them (p.242). Lock’s pragmatic description is a very welcome totaling up to the writing on biomedical ambiguity. But it somewhat considers like the wider expression of reductionism has scuttled its way now.
Lock is mainly concerned with ambiguity – and its diligence, yet efflorescence, in the face of researchers’ determined dedication in the considerate Alzheimer’s all the way through a biomedical and neurogenetic structure. Lock informs her audience that Alzheimer is ‘the most identified dementia subcategory and verify to be an indefinable phenomenon’ (p.11). She situates this ambiguity in a broad sequence of tensions linking the ‘localization’ of ‘entanglement’ of the mind and environment, and the centre of neuropathy Alzheimer theory. Further, how the vague detach among pathology and ‘normal process of aging’; and queried how in a ‘post-genomic’ phase, investigators ought to construe ‘the several additional somatic issues’ that have significant effects on dementia (p.5, p.232, p.240).
References
Bayley, J. Paths to Alzheimer Prevention. The Alzheimer Conundrum: Entanglements of Dementia and Aging, 76. 2013.
Lock, M.. The Alzheimer conundrum: Entanglements of dementia and aging. Princeton University Press. 2013
