[astropsyche]

I have worked in caring for people living with dementia since the early 1980s and I can assure anyone who asks that the incidence of dementia is CERTAINLY rising year on year. Lots of people here have offered a variety of causes - most of which seem well argued. My view is linked to vaccines. In England vaccines began to be given en masse in the late 1920s and early 30s and nobody seems to know precisely what was in these vaccines. If one counts forwards in time the beginning of this 'epidemic' in UK was about fifteen years ago and the number of diagnoses increases here yearly. As the form of dementia most often related to old age has emerged and grown rapidly since the mid 1980s and the constituents of vaccines were [are] very suspect [mercury used as a preservative?], along with an increase in the ingestion of heavy metals related to industrial pollution - I feel extremely angry when dementia is dismissed as weak old people living too long! Trust me - there is something deeply wrong here and the last thing people living with dementia and their families, friends and carers need are ill-informed people making unfounded statements. Interesting - people living to a ripe old age in non-industrial countries are not succombing to dementia in anything like the same numbers as those who live in the west. Why I wonder?