Dementia: Could lessons from Covid help find a cure?
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 12 April 2022
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
Just before the pandemic, the government promised a 'dementia moonshot' to blast us towards a dementia cure. What happened to it?
Today: former prime minister David Cameron and Sunday Times science editor Ben Spencer on Britain’s fastest growing disease, dementia.
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Guests:
- Ben Spencer, science editor, The Sunday Times.
- David Cameron, former UK prime minister and president of Alzheimer's Research UK.
- Willy Gilder, former BBC radio reporter, living with Alzheimer’s disease.
Clips: BBC, Channel 4 News, Sky News, ABC News, WRTV.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The fastest growing disease in Britain is dementia. Nearly a million people in this country |
| 0:11.2 | have it and we're aging so that number will only rise. Seeing this coming, the government |
| 0:18.0 | promised a dementia moonshot to blast us towards a dementia cure. |
| 0:23.8 | So much for a dementia moonshot, it's fizzled out certainly. What COVID has showed us is |
| 0:29.3 | that science can make a huge difference. What would be a tragedy is if we threw all that away. |
| 0:36.1 | So why has there been so little progress on dementia compared to other conditions? Well, |
| 0:41.6 | we threw the kitchen sink at COVID, so could that work for this disease too? And we'll be hearing |
| 0:47.7 | from the former PM in a rare interview with the Sunday Times. Why were you so passionate? |
| 0:53.5 | But I didn't at that time, I didn't have a sort of family interest in it, actually |
| 0:58.0 | subsequently the political has become more personal. |
| 1:02.9 | You're listening to stories of our times and the times and the Sunday Times. I'm David Aronovich. |
| 1:08.0 | Today, dementia, could the lessons from COVID help find a cure? |
| 1:17.2 | Today's story begins with a fellow journalist. |
| 1:20.8 | My name's Willie Gilder. I was a local radio reporter working in North Hamptonshire. |
| 1:26.2 | Willie worked for BBC Radio. |
| 1:28.3 | The emergency incident that's occurring in North Hamptonshire, Willie Gilder has the latest |
| 1:32.4 | details. Willie, what's happened? Yes, your news of this is still rather patchy, but we're hearing |
| 1:37.3 | reports of a major... Zapping around the county, being called out at midnight to the fires, |
| 1:42.5 | reporting on the sad demise of North Hamptonshire County Council, generally getting stuck into |
| 1:48.2 | a local area and having a good time. I now have early stage atypical Alzheimer's disease. |
| 2:00.0 | Let's talk about what led up to the diagnosis. Presumably, there were symptoms. Take me through it. |
| 2:07.1 | Well, it's very intriguing, actually. I was first diagnosed with depression. The problem is, |
... |
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