An Interdisciplinary Conference
Friday March 26, Turner Auditorium, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Researchers, clinicians and scholars from various disciplines have examined different aspects of the effort to find drug treatments for dementia. But seldom have they seriously engaged each other’s views across disciplinary boundaries. This conference will bring together scholars, researchers and practitioners from various disciplines in medicine, the social sciences, and humanities to share perspectives on the historical development, current status and possible futures of pharmaceutical treatments for the age-related dementias.

Over the past several decades, the development and use of drug treatments has become one of the most sought after yet controversial aspects of medicine. Nowhere has this been truer than in the field of aging and dementia. The development of pharmaceutical treatments for Alzheimer’s and related disorders brings together a number of complex and powerful issues – the economic, social and political pressures of an aging population; cultural attitudes toward aging, decline, cognition, memory, and selfhood; biomedicine’s ongoing difficulty with clearly defining the boundaries between aging and disease; and the often conflicting interests of patients, their caregivers, clinicians, researchers and the pharmaceutical industry.

Part of the special 10th Anniversary Two-Day Update on the Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders
March 26-27, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Confirmed Presenters:
Jesse F. Ballenger, PhD – The Johns Hopkins University
Steve Ferris, MD – New York University
David Healy, MD – University of North Wales
Paul Leber, MD – Director, Neuro-Pharm Group
Margaret Lock, PhD – McGill University
Harry Marks, PhD – Johns Hopkins University
Lawrence Olanoff – Executive Vice President, Forest Laboratories
Donald Price, MD –Johns Hopkins University
Charles Rosenberg, PhD – Harvard University
Leon Thal, MD – University of California at San Diego
Rein Vos, MD, PhD – University of Maastricht
Peter Whitehouse, MD, PhD – Case Western Reserve University

For information about receiving Continuing Medical Education credits for this event, as well as a full description of the two-day 10th Annual Update on the Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders, and information on registration, contact the Johns Hopkins Office of Continuing Medical Education at 410-955-2959, or visit: http://www.hopkinscme.org/cme/Months/mar04.html.

Presented by the Department of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins Medicine, and the Copper Ridge Institute

Co-sponsored by the University Memory and Aging Center, University Hospitals and Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland and the Institute on Aging, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.