The conceptualization of dementia has changed dramatically in recent years with the claim that, through early detection and by controlling several risk factors, a prevention of dementia is possible. Although encouraging and providing hope against this feared condition, this claim is open to scrutiny. This volume looks at how this new conceptualization ignores many of the factors which influence a dementia sufferers’ prognosis, including their history with education, food and exercise as well as their living in different epistemic cultures. The central aim is to question the concept of prevention and analyze its impact on aging people and aging societies.
Table of Content
List of Figures
Introduction: Reflections on the ‘New Dementia’
Annette Leibing and Silke Schicktanz
Part I: The Discursive and Social Practices of Dementia Prevention
Chapter 1. A Window to Act? Revisiting the Conceptual Foundations of Alzheimer’s Disease in Dementia Prevention
Lara Keuck
Chapter 2. The Vascularization of Alzheimer’s Disease: Prevention in ‘Glocal’ Geriatric Care
Annette Leibing
Chapter 3. If Dementia Prevention Is the Answer, What Was the Question? Observations from the German Alzheimer’s Disease Debate
Silke Schicktanz
Chapter 4. Dementia Prevention: Another Expansion of the Preventive Horizon
Matthias Leanza
Chapter 5. Mind’s Frailty: Elements of a ‘Geriatric Logic’ in the Clinical Discourse about Dementia Prevention
Alessandro Blasimme
Part II: From the Prediction and Early Detection to the Prevention of Dementia
Chapter 6. Revisiting MCI: On Classificatory Drift
Tiago Moreira
Chapter 7. The Preventive Uncertainty of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI): The Experts, the Market and the Subjects of Diagnosis
Stephen Katz, Kevin R. Peters and Peri J. Ballantyne
Part III: Conceptual Premises and Normative Claims of Prevention
Chapter 8. Staging Prevention, Arresting Progress: Chronic Disease Prevention and the Lifestyle Frame
Kirsten Bell
Chapter 9. Responsibilization of Aging? An Ethical Analysis of the Moral Economy of Prevention
Mark Schweda and Larissa Pfaller
Chapter 10. Governing through Prevention: Lifestyle and the Health Field Concept
Thomas Foth
Afterword: Looking Forward
Peter J. Whitehouse and Daniel R. George
Index
About the author
Silke Schicktanz is Professor of Cultural and Ethical Studies of Biomedicine at the Institute of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine at the University Medical Center Göttingen. Her recent books include co-editing Planning Later Life: Bioethics and Public Health in Ageing Societies (Routledge, 2017) and Cross-Cultural Comparisons on Surrogacy and Egg Donation: Interdisciplinary perspectives from India, Germany and Israel (Palgrave Mac Millian, 2018).