ry a letter around a week beforemailing it, it is all right because youare 80.

At 80 you can relax with no mis­givings. You have a perfect alibi foreverything. Nobody expects much ofyou.

If you act silly, it's your secondchildhood. Everybody is looking forsymptoms of softening of the brain.

It's a great deal better than being65 or 70 . At that time they expectyou to retire toa little house in Flor­ida and become a discontented,grumbling, limping has-been.

But if you survive until you are 80,everybody is surprised that you arealive, surprised that you can walkand surprised that you can reveal lu­cid intervals.

At 70, people are mad at you foreverything; at 80 they forgive you for 'anything. If you ask me, life beginsat 80, and it's even better at 82. Mer­ry Christmas!

RICHARD TELINDE, MD, Md.

EMETIC, NOT METRICGN focuses the attention of nurseson the health care concerns andneeds of our aging population in avaluable way. Your editorial "AnOld Person Is Not an Old Person IsNot an Old Person" (May/June, p.148) seems especially apt, so I amsharing it with friends .

I do have a question, however,about the chart of Drug-Aspirin in­teractions (May/June p. 192) . I amnot aware of any "antirnetric" drugs;nor are either of the pharmacistswith whom I work. Should this cate­gory have been antiemetic drugs?This seems to make more sense.

SUSAN PATTERSON, RN, N.D.

Much more sense! We are so nau­seated by the typographical errorthat we may need an antiemetic.­The Editors

NEWS WATCHContinued from page 368

leagues at the National Institute ofNeurological and CommunicativeDisorders and Stroke (NINCDS)had been studying the possible impli­cations of Guam's environmental de­ficiency in calcium and magnesiumand excess of aluminum and othermetals.

Studies in Guam have attractedattention because. of similarities be­tween the parkinsonism-dementiasyndrome and the presenile form ofAlzheimer's dementia. In both disor­ders, there is an excessive accumula­tion of neurofibrillary tangles in thebrains of victims which is associatedwith severe dementia and death.

These latest findings reconfirmPerl's earlier work linking high con­centrations of aluminum in the brainto the development of neurofibrillarytangles, as well as work of Japaneseinvestigators in both Guam and Ja­pan..They also lend support to a de­veloping hypothesis that environ­mental factors may be an underlyingcause of the ALS and dementia soprevalent in Guam.

NINCOS scientists are exploringthe possibility that secondary hyper­parathyroidism caused by lack ofcalcium and magnesium in the envi­ronment provokes an accumulationof metal ions within brain tissue.

Future studies will investigatewhether accumulations of metals inthe brain are a primary cause of Alz­heimer's disease or if other agents orcircumstances might combine withenvironmental factors to trigger theonset of chronic, but ultimately fa­tal, diseases of the central nervoussystem.

Disability in HomeResidents Rising: GAO

WASHINGTON, D.C.-Disabilityand dependence are increasingamong nursing home residents, ac­cording to a General Accounting Of­fice study report issued July 15.

The study, requested by HouseEnergy and Finance CommitteeChairman Henry Waxman (0.-­Calif.), also found an alarming in­crease in the difficulty states arehaving in reimbursing Medicaidnursing home expenditures. States

Continued on page 380

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