Tonight on Nightline, moment of truth, a personal journey to investigate the genetic testing
doctors hope may help combat Alzheimer's disease as I face down my own fears and take
the test myself.
It's a ruthless and incurable disease afflicting millions of Americans and devastating families.
So is it in my future?
Tonight we will find out.
Home sweet RV, the recession knocked them from their house but they have a roof over
their heads and are ready to roll.
How living on four wheels has forced one family to appreciate life's little things.
From the global resources of ABC News with Terry Moran in Washington, Martin Bashir and
Cynthia McFadden in New York City, this is Nightline, March 25th, 2009.
Good evening everyone, I'm Terry Moran.
We begin tonight with a looming public health catastrophe.
There is an Alzheimer's disease tsunami heading this way as the baby boomers age and the disease
takes millions of them down.
On Capitol Hill today, California First Lady Maria Shriver, retired Supreme Court Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich joined forces to testify before
Congress about Alzheimer's.
It was an urgent call to action, the costs of Alzheimer's in dollars and in heartbreak
are going to be simply staggering.
I know about this disease on a very personal level.
I wanted to see if there is hope and how to fight for it.
This is not going to be your typical story about Alzheimer's disease.
You're going to visit a photo shoot for GQ Magazine with music star Sheryl Crow and Will
I Am.
You'll get to come to my office and watch me spit in a tube.
It's embarrassing to be filmed doing it, but it's all for a good cause.
You're going to listen to Newt Gingrich and no matter what your political views are, I
guarantee you're going to like what he has to say.
I think first of all, tell your friends there's hope.
And this is really special.
You'll get to meet my wife, Karen.
Okay.
So this will be, I hope, a different take on Alzheimer's, a disease that is a looming
public health catastrophe.
Every 72 seconds, someone in America develops Alzheimer's.
5.3 million Americans are living with the disease today and that figure will skyrocket
as the baby boomers age.
The math is merciless.
One in eight of us will get Alzheimer's by age 65.
One in two of us will get Alzheimer's by age 85.
And that might well include me.
My mother, Margaret Louise Moran, Margie Lu, died of Alzheimer's in 2001 at age 78.
So like so many millions of Americans, I know the pain of losing a loved one to this disease.
And I know the fear of it.
This is the test.
I wanted to face my fears and see what we can do to fight Alzheimer's.
So I decided to get my DNA tested to see if I have a genetic link to the disease.
It is a big step to do this, but it's a step that you can take.
You can take charge of your future.
All I had to do was spit into a test tube to provide a DNA sample.
What I was really looking for was knowledge about myself, about the disease.
And that, believe it or not, takes us right to that photo shoot in New York.
Yes, that's Sheryl Crow in there, and in this one, that's Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas.
But who are these other guys?
They're scientists, specifically the rock stars of science, some of our greatest scientific
minds brought together by GQ Magazine and the Jeffrey Bean Foundation to put scientific
achievement back into the heart of the culture and promote scientific literacy.
Movies like Superman and X-Men and these superheroes.
The real superheroes are these guys that are making miracles happen all the time.
Will.i.am posed with three of the world's top researchers into Alzheimer's disease,
and that's why we're here.
Did you enjoy that?
That was a lot of fun.
Dr. Ron Peterson was Ronald Reagan's physician as the former president descended into the
darkness of Alzheimer's.
He's been on the front lines of this fight for decades.
There's a sense out there, I think, in the public that it's such a daunting challenge
that there's almost no progress being made.
What do you think of that?
Well, on the contrary, I think if you look at where we are today versus where we were
three or five years ago in Alzheimer's disease research, we know so much more about the disease
process now, which is giving us true targets to shoot at from a therapeutic sense.
Dr. Stephen Dikoski and Sam Gandy are in the vanguard of those efforts.
As we speak, there are some drugs, the drugs developed several years ago, that are symptomatic
drugs for the disorder and probably 100 medications in various stages of development that are
targeted specifically at the disease itself.
A hundred medications being tested right now, including, imagine this, a pill to prevent
Alzheimer's disease.
But that's the future.
Maybe 10 years, maybe 15.
Right now, today, Alzheimer's is still a terrible struggle.
So I want you to meet Meryl Comer.
She's the one who organized this photo shoot and a lot more.
Meryl is my inspiration.
She's one of the leading activists against Alzheimer's in the country.
It's personal for her.
I'm right here.
Very personal.
Do you know my name?
Can you say Meryl?
Meryl's husband, Harvey Grolnik, was a brilliant physician and scientist when he was diagnosed
with Alzheimer's 15 years ago.
She's cared for him ever since.
I've taken care of him longer than we've been married.
29 years we've been married, 15 years he's been sick.
Just do it.
People do it all the time.
It is not extraordinary.
It's life.
And now, Meryl's mother, Molly, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and she's taking care of
her too.
Molly refuses to acknowledge the diagnosis.
If I were to say, you and I went to the doctor and received a diagnosis, that you had Alzheimer's,
what would that say to you?
I would die.
Why do you say that, mother?
You have children who love you.
I wouldn't know it.
It was Meryl who inspired me to get active, to get my own DNA tested for Alzheimer's,
something she is doing too.
For her, it's a political act as much as a medical one.
You were in great shape.
It's a terror for our generation.
I mean, the baby boom generation, this will be our epidemic.
This is the dark side of longevity.
I just saw it young.
So it's like being witness to the future.
I'm afraid for all of us.
And to me, it's time for a generation to say, unacceptable.
This is not the way we want to end our lives.
But making Alzheimer's disease an unacceptable fate for the baby boom generation and beyond
will take commitment, activism, and money.
Today in Congress, the leaders of the National Alzheimer's Study Group, including Newt Gingrich,
former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and former Senator Bob Kerry called for a
massive government-led effort to find a cure.
Our nation has no real plan for a federal effort to find a solution or to help manage
the costs, and we need to do both.
Last week, we talked with Gingrich about defeating Alzheimer's.
I think the key strategy is, first of all, to recognize that the science is potentially
there, that we're right at the breakthrough point, that we need to rethink how we invest
in Alzheimer's.
So the scientists are at work, you and your colleagues and Alzheimer's activists are at
work.
What can people do?
What can ordinary people do on this who are concerned?
I think, first of all, tell your friends there's hope.
This isn't something you just have to endure.
We can do radically better.
Second, tell your congressmen and your senators, you want action to turn that hope into reality.
Up here we have your estimated lifetime risk.
When we come back, my moment of truth.
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Actor John Stamos on an all-new Jimmy, coming up on ABC.
Friday, Tori Spelling and her mom Candy's private feud.
It ended up plastered all over the tabloids.
Now Friday, Candy Spelling tells us everything, even what life's like inside her 50,000 square
foot house.
How many bedrooms are here?
See on 2020, Friday at 10, 9 center.
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Alzheimer's disease wreaks havoc on families.
It did in my family.
And once you've seen it up close, it haunts you forever.
What if DNA testing can tell you the risk that Alzheimer's could become a part of your
own life?
Well, as much as it may have frightened me, I was determined to take that test.
It was time to find out the results.
The moment of truth.
With my wife, Karen, she didn't want me to be alone for this.
I went to the headquarters of Navigenics, the company that analyzed my DNA.
We were both really nervous.
Here we go.
Genetic testing's scary for a lot of us, but it's important to remember what I wasn't
going to find out, as Dr. Vance Vignier of Navigenics told me.
And that's the point that we have to, you know, reinforce over and over again.
This is not your destiny.
These are new risk factors, just like high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
Thank you so much for coming.
Make yourselves comfortable.
How comfortable can I get?
Very.
Really?
We found out my results from Alyssa Levin, a genetic counselor at Navigenics.
How bad can it be?
I say that now.
Alyssa explained the tests then.
And here are your specific results.
There it was, my DNA risk profile for a whole host of diseases, including Alzheimer's.
It turns out I am somewhat more at risk for getting Alzheimer's, a 19% lifetime risk,
compared with 9% for most men.
Could have been worse.
Yeah.
I think that's one way it feels.
But it also feels empowering.
It does.
I know.
Yeah.
It is heavy duty.
That's it.
For Meryl Comer, who allowed us to be with her in Washington when she learned her results
before she called her counselor, it was worse.
My overall risk.
Oh my God.
She had two of the genetic markers, a 37% lifetime risk.
I will put my life in order.
I will tell everybody how much I love them.
I will live the moment.
And it's a piece of information.
And I'll fight harder.
That's all.
That's what we do.
Meryl will fight.
That's who she is.
And the scientists will fight.
It's a battle they know they can win.
We all have to fight to end the scourge of this terrible disease, to take responsibility
for our health and for each other.
I think it means we have to plan.
Long term care plans.
You know, psychologically be prepared.
Karen and I have been married nearly 20 years for better or worse in sickness and in health.
You'll take care of me.
I'll take care of you.
I love you.
If you want more information, the Alzheimer's Association at ALZ.org, that's a great place
to start.
And please remember the caregivers.
When we come back, we're going to shift gears.
They may say there's no place like home, but what if that home is suddenly an RV?
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Thursday, an episode that defines great television.
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Most of you know Larry Garzinelli, owner of West Harvard Furniture.
Now meet Tyler, Larry's grandson.
Larry is busy teaching Tyler everything he knows about owning a furniture business.
And the most important part of the job is inspecting every piece of furniture that comes
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Nightline continues from Washington with Terry Moran.
The R in RV stands for recreational, of course, not residential.
But you are about to meet one family forced by the recession to live inside a vehicle,
a large one for sure, but a vehicle nonetheless.
In these hard times, they are not alone.
And as Neil Karlincki reports, they've managed to find the silver lining in this dark cloud.
Surrounded by the beautiful hills of Boise, Idaho, Dave McNeil likes to sing about the
things he knows.
Sing about life in America.
These days, cliché as it is, he knows there's no place like home.
And for him, that word home is a bit of a moving target.
It's a 1988 Fleetwood Southwind 33L motorhome built on a big Chevy truck chassis.
This is no vacation getaway.
You've heard of downsizing.
Well, for Dave and his family, it's taken on a whole new meaning.
The family just moved into an RV.
What do they call this?
This is called the basement.
The basement.
Yeah.
A storage hold is the basement and the microwave isn't a microwave.
We use it as a cupboard because Leslie doesn't believe in microwaves.
Got to use every space that we can.
They are a family of three.
Dave, his wife, Leslie, 10 year old daughter, Elise, plus two dogs.
I got a TV I can see from my bedroom.
That's cool.
I used to have to go all the way downstairs to watch TV.
Now I can just go a couple of feet, sit down and press the play button.
That cheerfulness has worn off at times as the novelty gives way to a very small, somewhat
strange reality.
There have been times, especially when my daughter's been upset about the change, when
I felt like, what have I done?
I must have made some terrible mistakes.
Life isn't simple and it wasn't just one problem.
There was the lost six figure job as editor of a magazine.
A cross country move to another job that fell through.
A lawsuit over moving expenses.
Then while they were without medical insurance, a slip, a broken ankle and a huge hospital
bill.
You never expect that, do you, in life?
You could be just a slip, a broken ankle or a foot away from everything changing.
Yep.
It was a big surprise for us.
We had to scramble.
We took any job we could.
Leslie is determined to maintain as much of a normal lifestyle as she can, cooking up
an ambitious breakfast in a kitchen that could fit in her old pantry.
Pretty ambitious to make a breakfast like that.
Well, you gotta eat.
I want to be able to eat the same kinds of things we were eating before.
She's a substitute teacher and scours a school website every day looking for openings.
We watched as she missed a chance at a day's work by just seconds.
Somebody beat me to it.
I clicked the button to select it, but someone had already clicked it right before me, I
guess.
Tell me, how tough have things been for you all?
Seems like for some reason we've had quite a string of bad luck the last couple of years,
but I don't know.
I'm always hopeful that things are going to turn around for us.
On a chilly night under a full moon, we listened to Leslie reading a good night story to her
daughter and were struck by the choice.
Chapter one.
Something wonderful.
Back before the depression began, when her family had plenty of money, no one would have
carried on much about a new coat.
Now it was something to celebrate.
A far cry from the story and the setting just two weeks earlier and a world away.
For this house has become to me of all dwellings, the most blessed.
This was their house just across town in a quiet family neighborhood.
When we moved to Boise, this was the house we moved right into.
It had just been renovated and it was perfect for us.
And this basement room was my studio.
It's all in black boxes.
Once their finances collapsed, they could no longer afford the $900 a month rent and
were evicted.
So they packed up and took on a whole new way of life from a 1200 square foot house
all the way down to a 300 square foot RV.
I see living in the motor home as a kind of a kind of a lifeboat, a lifeboat that we could
steer to another town if we needed to, if we needed to follow the jobs.
They're not alone as we found out at this nearby RV park.
What's it like living, you know, a family of four and a dog in an RV?
Rough sometimes.
Sure.
It has its ups and downs, you know.
Sometimes it's a tight squeeze.
The Deaton family thought this would be just a temporary place to live until James was
laid off five months ago.
You were planning on being out of here by this time due to the layoff.
We'll probably be here for at least another year.
Another year or so.
We're seeing the higher end of folks in the fifth wheels and motor homes and trailers come
in here because they have lost their homes.
You said you had someone here who was out of a $450,000 house.
That's correct.
So we have doctors, lawyers, we have.
You have doctors and lawyers here?
Yes, we do.
It teaches you what you really need, I guess.
It sure does.
It does.
Yep.
You learn to conserve shopping for groceries and then.
Everything has got its place organized constantly.
No amount of organization can cure this 10-year-old's complaint about a bed next to the kitchen.
Maybe like not having their butt in my face when they get in the refrigerator.
Their butt in your face?
Yes.
Her father, Dave, has more pressing issues like earning a paycheck.
His long-time dream of becoming a professional musician is finally paying the bills.
Just give me a holler, I'm Dave.
I'll be right out here.
At the neighborhood music store.
I was looking around trying to find something to do and there weren't any editor-in-chief
positions open.
So I thought, why not come here?
It's here or McDonald's.
So I chose here.
Things have been working out pretty well.
It's a simple life and they're grateful for it.
Especially grateful for the couple who heard about their situation and donated the land
they've now planted themselves on.
If we can help, then we figure it's going to be good.
Good for the economy just by helping out.
Yeah, now's the time where everyone needs to help each other to make it through the
hard times.
It's a safe bet there's a future song to be written from all this.
Dave just hopes to do it from the comforts of a more permanent home someday.
Until then, the McNeals have a roof over their heads and a plan.
If I got a job offer in Connecticut, I could just drive there.
You just pull up stakes and roll.
Just pull up stakes and roll.
It's just like the grapes of wrath.
Making the best of hard times, even on four wheels, it's still home.
I'm Neil Karlinski for Nightline in Boise, Idaho.
Making ends meet and doing it with dignity.
Our best to the McNeals and our thanks to Neil Karlinski.
We'll be right back.
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3Max Professional Realty in Roseburg is holding its Spring 2009 real estate auction.
If you're an investor, a first time home buyer or are looking for a rental property, visit
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Then plan to attend the auction on Saturday, March 28th at the Old McMahon Furniture Building
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Brandy Smith tonight on KEZI 9 News.
This faith inspired pastor brought a paroled child killer into his home to live and now
frightened neighbors are fighting back.
Would you feel safe?
Has he taken charity too far?
Tomorrow, both sides speak out only on Good Morning America.
We got some late news because of dangerous flood conditions tonight in Bismarck, North
Dakota.
They blasted portions of the Missouri River Wednesday to break up an ice jam.
Earlier, residents spent the day piling sandbags along the rising waters.
Well, tomorrow night we've got the nightline face off everyone is talking about as our
panelists debate one of humanity's eternal questions, does Satan?