The toll of Alzheimer’s disease is growing, with the average cost per patient far outstripping that of a cancer patient, while patients and families continue to suffer. Advances in care have been made but more could happen if patent law didn’t discourage investment in long-term clinical trials, writes Todd Golde, director of the McKnight Brain Institute at the University of Florida. The problem, he explains, is that the private sector does not have a clear financial incentive to conduct these studies.

And another physician-scholar writes about how the families of those dying from any disease are often overlooked. While it’s only natural that medical students are taught to focus on the patient, writes Indiana University’s Richard Gunderman, “there is another group of people to whom health professionals need to learn to attend: the dying patient’s family.”