In her work, but also while visiting with her mom, Feldman considered the enormity of the Alzheimer’s problem: About 5.8 million Americans now have the disease, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. That number will climb to at least 13.8 million by 2050, a 138% rise, and as many as 1 in 3 people who live to be 85 in the United States will die with Alzheimer’s disease.

“We are really in an epidemic,” Feldman said, driven largely by baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964), who are growing older and coming to an age when the disease most commonly strikes.

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Alzheimer’s disease rates about to skyrocket as baby boomers age https://t.co/s0Q6EGi3rU #alzheimer

— GoodQuestion (@GQinterview) May 6, 2019

Students from Highland Secondary School in Comox have been waving back at Tinney Davidson for years but on Thursday, hundreds of students gathered in front of her home to say one final goodbye.
“Oh lovely thank you,” said Davidson as she sat in a chair on her front porch.

Tinny Davidson is now 88-years-old but in 2007, when she and her husband moved into the home on Guthrie Road near Highland, they started waving to students every day and soon the students began waving back. A bond between generations was born.

“I just liked the look of the children and they all looked in and I thought if they’re looking in, I’ll wave to them and that’s how it started,” said Davidson.

CHEK News has interviewed Tinney Davidson several times over the years and our first story about her in 2014 made headlines around the world.

On Thursday, 100s of students crowded her front lawn after school to say goodbye before she moves into an independent living facility.

Read it all and do not miss the video.

He pointed to a “woefully unprepared” U.S. population.

“In the decades to come, we will witness millions of elderly American’s, Baby Boomers and others, slipping into poverty.” he said in a podcast this week with the Peak Prosperity blog. “‘Too frail to work, too poor to retire’” will become the new normal for many elderly Americans.”

Siedle threw out some startling numbers to show just how much pensions are underfunded, a pervasive problem made worse by their inability to reach performance targets, which is typically set around 7%.

“Warren Buffett BRK.A, +1.41% himself has said that is an unrealistic return,” Siedle said in the interview. “Wall Street’s solution to every investor problem is, and will always be, pay us more fees.”

Investors then pay those higher fees for “ever riskier rolls of the dice,” in an effort to chase returns, which “has resulted, predictably, in worse performance.”

Read it all.

“‘Too frail to work, too poor to retire’” will become the new normal for many elderly Americans.” https://t.co/9RCCLyyP73

— Retirement 360 (@Retirement_360) April 13, 2019

Professor Weale, emeritus professor of political theory and public policy at University College London, said he saw no reason why the RCP’s governing council had decided to abandon its previous position, which stated the organisation could not support changing the law on assisted suicide.

“There seems to be no chain of coherent reasoning leading to the council’s own position – a situation I regret deeply,” he said.

He also attacked the handling of the survey of doctors which led to the change in stance.

The poll asked doctors if the RCP should be for, against or neutral on assisted suicide; 43 per cent voted for opposition, 32 per cent backed changing the law, and just 25 percent voted for neutrality.

But unlike previous polls on the same question, the RCP’s council had decided in advance they should automatically switch to neutrality unless any of the three options was backed by a super-majority of 60 per cent.

As a result, the RCP announced last month it would be neutral on the issue, despite only one in four doctors endorsing that position.

Read it all.

My exclusive in Sunday’s @Telegraph:

‘Not coherent and unfair’: Professor quits Royal College of Physicians in protest at new neutral stance on assisted suicidehttps://t.co/isa6azYzIu

— Tim Wyatt (@tswyatt) April 8, 2019

Nearly nine in 10 people in Scotland support legalising assisted dying, according to a new poll. The Populus survey, commissioned by campaign group Dignity in Dying Scotland, found 87 per cent backed the move for terminally ill people with less than six months to live, with medical approval and safeguards. Just 8 per cent of people were opposed while the remainder said they did not know. The results, from a survey of 1,057 adults last month, were released as the campaign group starts a national advertising drive calling on people to help legalise assisted suicide. Campaigners want the Scottish Parliament to legislate to allow terminally ill, mentally competent adults to have the choice of an assisted death.

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Nearly nine in 10 people in Scotland support legalising assisted dying, according to a new poll.https://t.co/t7VxFSlgno

— The Scotsman (@TheScotsman) April 2, 2019

From there: Speaking following the Royal College of Physicans’ announcement of the adoption of a ‘neutral’ position on assisted dying The Bishop of Carlisle, James Newcome, said:

“We note the RCP’s decision, and welcome the President’s assurances that the RCP will not be focusing on assisted dying, instead continuing to champion high-quality palliative care services, an emphasis that the Church of England shares and has always encouraged.

“We also recognise that fewer than one third of RCP members wanted the College to support a change in the current law prohibiting assisted suicide while fewer than a quarter said they would participate in assisted dying should the law change.

“The Church of England’s position remains to affirm the intrinsic value of every human life and express its support for the current law on assisted suicide as a means of contributing to a just and compassionate society in which vulnerable people are protected.”

To survive, Jorge, who requested that his last name not be used for this story to protect his health information, sells fruit on the side of the road. “Rain or shine, cold or heat, I still have to work,” he says.

Most days, it’s the heat he struggles with the most, and in recent years, the city has felt hotter than ever.

“When you work in the streets,” Jorge says, “you really feel the change.”

And it may only be getting worse. The 2018 National Climate Assessment noted that the southeastern United States is already experiencing “more and longer summer heat waves.” By 2050, experts say, rising global temperatures are expected to mean that nearly half the days in the year in Florida will be dangerously hot, when the combination of heat and humidity will make it feel like it’s 105 degrees or more.

Read it all.

RT NPR: Holder and her FCCA colleagues are also working to educate other nurses and physicians who may not yet understand the links between their patients’ changing health and the changing climate around them.https://t.co/n6cynFjomT pic.twitter.com/GJqw1QfZNA

— John Hutchinson (@JohnTheHutch) March 30, 2019

New Jersey is set to become the latest state to legalize assisted suicide, as both chambers of the state legislature have passed a bill allowing the practice, which Governor Phil Murphy (D) says he will sign.

“Allowing terminally ill and dying residents the dignity to make end-of-life decisions according to their own consciences is the right thing to do,” said Murphy on Monday, who has in the past spoken about his “strict Catholic” upbringing.

“I look forward to signing this legislation into law,” he said.

New Jersey Catholic leaders have been firm against the progress of the new law.

“Assisted suicide promotes neither free choice nor compassion,” a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Newark told CNA.

“Every gift of human life is sacred, from conception to natural death, and the life and dignity of every person must be respected and protected at every stage and in every condition. Catholics should be leaders in the effort to defend and uphold the principle that each of us has a right to live with dignity through every day of our lives.”

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One of the many moving stories told pic.twitter.com/WzpGOGHvNf

— Madeleine Davies (@MadsDavies) March 23, 2019

–Shared by yours truly in the morning sermon–KSH.

Arnie Rosen, a retired doctor and amateur musician, created the “Band Grandpas” program in Rockford, Illinois so senior instrumentalists can help students and spread the joy of music.

watch it all.

For Americans under the age of 40, the 21st century has resembled one long recession.

I realize that may sound like an exaggeration, given that the economy has now been growing for almost a decade. But the truth is that younger Americans have not benefited much.

Look at incomes, for starters. People between the ages of 25 and 34 were earning slightly less in 2017 than people in that same age group had been in 2000….

Read it all.

The old are getting richer, and the young are getting poorer: Over the past three decades, the net worth of the 65+ age group has risen more than 60%. The net worth of the under-45 age group has fallen more than 30%. https://t.co/Dy6nDstoAf pic.twitter.com/jBF2VolFVw

— David Leonhardt (@DLeonhardt) January 28, 2019

…over the long run it will matter. The boomer conservatives, raised in the era of Reagan, generally believe in universal systems — universal capitalism, universal democracy and the open movement of people and goods. Younger educated conservatives are more likely to see the dream of universal democracy as hopelessly naïve, and the system of global capitalism as a betrayal of the working class. Younger conservatives are comfortable in a demographically diverse society, but are also more likely to think in cultural terms, and to see cultural boundaries.

Whether on left or right, younger people have emerged in an era of lower social trust, less faith in institutions, a greater awareness of group identity. They live with the reality of tribal political warfare and are more formed by that warfare.

I guess the final irony is this: Liberal educated boomers have hogged the spotlight since Woodstock. But now events are driven by the oldsters who fuel Trump and the young wokesters who drive the left. The boomers finally got the top jobs, but feel weak and beleaguered.

Read it all.

“In the age of social media, virtue is not defined by how compassionately you act. Virtue is defined by how vehemently you react to that which you find offensive.” https://t.co/oWFuaRvEps https://t.co/oWFuaRvEps

— Ismail Royer (@IsmailRoyer) December 5, 2018

• Two in five – or 40% – of older workers and their spouses will be downwardly mobile in retirement.

• If workers ages 50-60 retire at age 62, 8.5 million people are projected to fall below twice the Federal Poverty Level, with retirement incomes below $23,340 for singles and $31,260 for couples.

• 2.6 million of 8.5 downwardly mobile workers and their spouses will have incomes below the poverty level – $11,670 for an individual and $15,730 for a two-person household….

Read it all.

For those who are in or nearing #retirement, please remember to consult your financial advisor if you have any questions or concerns about the 2.8% increase in social security checks https://t.co/9E4PopLmh8

— David Stone (@ThePowerofaPlan) November 15, 2018

A Dutch “positivity trainer” has launched a legal battle to change his age and boost his dating prospects.

Emile Ratelband, 69, wants to shift his birthday from 11 March 1949 to 11 March 1969, comparing the change to identifying as being transgender.

“We live in a time when you can change your name and change your gender. Why can’t I decide my own age?” he said.

A local court in the eastern city of Arnhem is expected to rule on the case within four weeks….

Read it all.

Nearly half of middle-class Americans face a slide into poverty as they enter their retirement, a recent study by the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School has concluded.

That risk has been driven by depressed earnings, depressed asset values and increased health-care costs — causing 74 percent of Americans planning to work past traditional retirement age. Additionally, both private and public pension plans have been allowed to become seriously underfunded. So what can be done?

Fundamental changes in the structure of the U.S. economy, combined with increased health-care costs and lack of saving, have created a financial trap for millions of American workers heading into retirement.

Roughly 40 percent of Americans who are considered middle class (based on their income levels) will fall into poverty or near poverty by the time they reach age 65, according to the study.

Read it all.

Fundamental changes in the structure of the U.S. economy, combined with increased health-care costs and lack of saving are creating a future road to poverty for much of the middle class https://t.co/gflU6zR4Qe @ElliotDofCowden

— Albert Fong (@albertfong98) October 12, 2018

“…it’s becoming increasingly clear that stereotypes of marijuana users as risk-taking disaffected youth are outdated in the era of legal marijuana, with middle-aged and even older Americans becoming more likely to use the drug than their children and grandchildren.”

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A recommendation that the American Medical Association maintain its opposition to medically assisted death was rejected Monday, with delegates at the AMA’s annual meeting in Chicago instead voting for the organization to continue reviewing its guidance on the issue.

Following a debate on whether the nation’s most prominent doctors’ group should revise its Code of Medical Ethics, the House of Delegates voted by a margin of 56 to 44 percent to have the AMA’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs keep studying the current guidance. That position, adopted a quarter-century ago, labels the practice “physician-assisted suicide” and calls it “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer.”

The council spent two years reviewing resolutions, not so much on whether to support the practice but on whether to take a neutral stance on what has become a divisive issue among health-care providers. The group’s report sought to find common ground, noting, “Where one physician understands providing the means to hasten death to be an abrogation of the physician’s fundamental role as healer that forecloses any possibility of offering care that respects dignity, another in equally good faith understands supporting a patient’s request for aid in hastening a foreseen death to be an expression of care and compassion.”

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The skeptic might ask: Why object to legalized suicide, particularly where terminally ill patients are concerned? If people want to take their own lives, why should anyone feel entitled to stand in the way?

The answer is twofold. For one, we should not as a rule grant doctors the prerogative to help kill their patients. The whole history of medicine has been one of improved healing or, in terminal cases, reduced suffering; euthanasia, which devalues life to the point of liquidation, is the precise opposite of good and responsible medical care. To legalize suicide in this way is to weaponize the medical system against the very people to which it should be most attentive.

On a deeper, more substantive level, legalized suicide strikes at the heart of one of the most indispensible ideas in human history: That every human life is precious beyond reckoning and worthy of both honor and protection. Killing someone, even someone who is already dying, directly controverts this principle; you cannot inject people with fatal doses of barbiturates without declaring, however implicitly, that their lives are worth less than an artificial minimum standard.

Those who advocate for legalized suicide see it as a matter of radical autonomy: We should leave it up to each individual to determine the worth of his own life, up to and including an act of suicide. But this is simply an evasive, almost cowardly instance of passing the buck. If you are actively or even passively complicit in an act of euthanasia, you cannot say you do not, in some way, agree with the suicidal person’s assertion that his life is a waste and that he is better off dead.

It is philosophically unavoidable.

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After legalizing abortion and same-sex marriage in recent times, Portuguese lawmakers will decide Tuesday on another issue that has brought a confrontation between faith and politics in this predominantly Catholic country: whether to allow euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide.

The outcome of the vote is uncertain and is likely to be close, but Portugal could become one of just a handful of countries in the world to permit euthanasia under certain circumstances.

Euthanasia — when a doctor kills patients at their request — is legal in Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. In Switzerland, and some U.S. states, assisted suicide — where patients administer the lethal drug themselves, under medical supervision — is permitted.

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California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra on Monday filed an appeal against a judge’s recent ruling overturning the state’s physician-assisted suicide law.

The controversial law, which allows terminally ill patients to request lethal medications from their doctors, has been the subject of litigation since it was enacted two years ago.

Last week, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Daniel A. Ottolia ruled that the law’s passage was unconstitutional and the law should be overturned.

Becerra’s action Monday moves the case to an appeals court, which will decide the future of the law. He also asked that the law stay in place while the matter is further litigated, a request that will most likely be granted, said Kathryn Tucker, an attorney who heads the End of Life Liberty Project at UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy.

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At first, Kathy, 53 years old, spoke to me calmly, but as the minutes ticked away, her voice started to crack. Her husband had a long-standing problem with alcohol. The couple, married for more than 25 years, had one son, and tried to keep the marriage together by seeing a therapist. But there came a decisive moment when she could no longer keep the relationship going. She told me: ‘I discovered a hotel receipt and went and counselled with our priest at that point. [The hotel receipt] was for the Oriental Fantasy suite at [this hotel] at 11 o’clock on a Tuesday morning and I’m quite certain I wasn’t there at the time.’ At that point, she knew that her marriage was over.

Kathy experienced a mid-life or what is also known as a ‘grey divorce’. A grey divorce is simply a divorce that occurs at or after the age of 50. Even though the divorce rate across all age groups has stabilised, the number of grey divorces in the United States has recently dramatically increased. Currently, about one out of every four divorces is grey.

What has caused this dramatic surge in grey divorces? First has simply been the ageing of the Baby Boomer generation. In 1990, there were only 63.5 million Americans aged 50 and older, but by 2010, there were 99 million in this same age group. By 2050, the US Census Bureau predicts that there will be 158.5 million individuals aged 50 and over. In addition to the growth in absolute numbers of such individuals, life expectancy has mostly continued to tick upwards. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 1950, men could be expected to live, on average, 65.6 years, while women could be expected to live 71.1 years, on average. By 2016, these ages had increased to 76.1 and 81.1, respectively. Both of these factors have worked to expose ever-greater numbers of couples to the possibility of a grey divorce.

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Quirks such as the £1 note are a reminder that life on the quaint British dependency of Guernsey is like it is on the mainland — but not in every way. The law governing how islanders die could soon make the difference starker.

In 10 days’ time, Guernsey will vote on whether to become the first place in the British Isles to legalise assisted dying, reigniting a national debate and raising fears of Swiss-style “death clinics” in the Channel.

The bill needs the support of 21 local politicians to pass: a simple majority of the 40 who sit in the island’s parliament. None belongs to any party or bloc, so the outcome is hard to predict.

Those who have drafted the law say it is strictly designed for terminally ill residents — but opponents believe the island, used by global elites as a tax haven, could become a magnet for death tourism.

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Are baby boomers, part of the first generation to lead the contemporary exodus from organized religion, returning to their religious roots?

The ninth wave of a multigenerational study that began in 1971 finds a little more than one in five boomers became more religious in the transition from their 50s to their 60s.

Why the change of heart among baby boomers as they moved from late middle age to early old age?

Older boomers cited several reasons, from seeking solace in life after the death of a spouse to finding other sources of meaning after the loss of a job to a desire to pass on religious beliefs to their grandchildren.

It is not clear if the findings suggest any kind of watershed moment for U.S. religion.

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“Nana, how is suicide okay for some people, but not for people like me?”

Eva Andrade’s teenage grandson, who had previously been hospitalized for suicidal ideation, had asked his grandmother that question recently: Hawaii became the seventh state to legalize physician-assisted suicide April 5, a year after a previous legislative attempt.

Proponents claimed the law would give people with terminal illnesses (and a diagnosis of less than six months to live) the personal autonomy to make that decision. The teenager did not see why the circumstances made a big difference for one group having the legal right to end life on their own terms, while others did not.

“This is a 15-year-old child making this connection on his own, just based on the conversations he was hearing,” Andrade said.

Andrade, spokeswoman for the Hawaii Catholic Conference, told the Register that the “Our Care, Our Choices Act,” which goes into effect Jan. 1, 2019, threatens negative social repercussions and will have a “very detrimental effect on our community.”

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The number of older people, 65 and over, attending church on a Sunday in England is increasing. There were 810,000 going to church in 1980, and 980,000 in 2017 (a 21 per cent increase). In Scotland, however, the numbers are respectively 190,000 and 170,000 (an 11 per cent decrease).

The proportion of older people in church in England is also increasing. It was 18 per cent in 1980 and 34 per cent in 2017; in Scotland the percentages were 21 per cent and 42 per cent respectively, also increasing significantly. In the population, numbers of those 65 and over are also increasing.

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When it comes to family, where does love stop and duty begin? Sometimes that’s easily answered: evolutionary instinct moulds a parent’s love for their children into something fierce and uncomplicated. Broaden out the focus to siblings, adult children, ageing parents, aunts and uncles, and the answer is less straightforward.

Britain’s more individualistic approach to family is often contrasted with family cultures in southern Europe. There, young people tend to leave the parental home later, and it is much more common to find three or even four generations of the same family living under the one roof. But as the UK’s housing crisis has given way to a “boomerang generation” of young people in their 20s still living at home, and as the shrinking amount of state funding for older care leaves more families to fend for themselves, there are signs that we might be starting to embrace a more Mediterranean approach to family life. The question we’re not asking is: at what cost?

Britain’s cultural approach to family has long been reinforced by its economy and its education system. In Victorian Britain, working-class young people left home in their early teens to enter domestic service, at one point the country’s biggest source of jobs. Half a century ago, baby boomers came of age in a world of cheap housing and plentiful jobs, which eased their route to independence. The number of young people going to university, many of them moving away from home, has ballooned from just 2% immediately after the second world war to over 40% today.

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Vito Perillo won his first race for mayor, wearing out two pairs of shoes as he campaigned door-to-door in Tinton Falls, New Jersey.

Watch it all–oh my is he inspiring.

Just a reminder: tomorrow after chapel we will celebrate Dr. James Houston's 95th birthday by gathering in the Atrium for cake and fellowship! https://t.co/fF7HTmpm8j pic.twitter.com/xkPzn5TpDL

— Regent College (@regentcollege) December 5, 2017

The vote came at the end of eight days of debate, including two all-night sittings with one that ended when an MP was rushed to hospital with a medical emergency.

Visibly emotional government MPs including Jaala Pulford, Jaclyn Symes, Cesar Melhem all embraced in the wake of the vote, which occurred in front of a packed public gallery where pro-euthanasia advocates including Andrew Denton, Dr Sally Cockburn sat alongside pro-life campaigners including Australian Christian Lobby Victorian chief executive Dan Flynn.

The vote came at the end of eight days of debate, including two all-night sittings with one that ended when an MP was rushed to hospital with a medical emergency.

The scheme, which is expected to come into play by 2019 will grant terminally ill patients of sound mind and a life expectancy of less than six months the ability to choose when they die.

The government has not yet released details on the lethal formula that will be given to patients, but has drafted the plan in which the drugs will be issued to patients in a locked box to which only they have the key.

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Melbourne Anglicans have pleaded with the Victorian Government not to legalise medically assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia just before the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill was passed in the lower house of the State Parliament.

The church’s synod discussed the bill on 19 October at their annual synod at St Paul’s Cathedral as a few blocks away Victorian MPs debated the bill in State Parliament.

Medical ethicist Dr Denise Cooper-Clarke told the synod the bill’s proposed safeguards were inadequate, that it was inherently discriminatory, and that improved palliative care was a much safer and more compassionate way to address “bad deaths”.

She said the bill would fundamentally change attitudes to suicide at a time when the Government was trying to reduce youth suicide.

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