a dear old friend of mine was robert butler. he died of leukemia. he was the first director of the national institute on aging. he said i am a scientist. no one believes in science more than i do. i would love to wake up tomorrow morning and see that there was a cure or even something to treat effectively, to delay a little bit, alzheimer's. he said i hope to do that, but hope is not a plan of action. we can all have this hope. i have this hope, too. ,y partner died of alzheimer's he was 15 years older than me. if you have lived through this, there is nothing more you would want, but hope is not a plan of action. for families taking care of alzheimer's, unlike the rest of the developed world, we don't pay for any help at home. the burden that also people who have only themselves, and there is no money to hire home health care, or could put our money where our mouth is. one reason that long-term care institutions are so that is what we pay the people who staff them. a society shows its values by how it pays people for certain jobs. we pay almost noth

robert butler whom i'm sure you knew who died at 82 last year of leukemia. and he basically invented the field of gerontology and was the first direct on the national institute of aging. you is the only voice on the '90s to 50 spam. i asked him a few months before he died. i interviewed him for the book, and i said what do you think about the prospects for, say, i cure for alzheimer's? and he said honestly, i'm a scientist and nobody believes in science more than a scientist. i'd like to wake up tomorrow morning as he there is a cure for alzheimer's. he said realistically i think the reason we need to invest more research now is it still a long way away. and furthermore you can always hope for something like that, but you can't base strategy for dealing with old age on the assumption that this is going to happen for you. i think that's my view. we can always hope for a medical miracle, but hope isn't a plan of action. hope is just help. >> host: i felt that your chapter on alzheimer's was the most passionate in the book, or maybe i was bringing my own experi