| dc.description.abstract | Alzheimer’s disease (AD) research, treatment, and prevention focus increasingly on developing personalized interventions based on personal genetic, biological, phenotypic data, for
early intervention (EI) to limit harm. This approach has much to recommend it, but important ethical and philosophical challenges follow that should be considered, which we analyze
here. We argue that advancing understanding of the causes of AD undermines the clarity of
the distinction between primary and secondary prevention. This makes it increasingly
unclear how primary and secondary categories can be appealed to as the basis for making
judgements about what interventions are permissible, and for distinguishing between
acceptably vs unacceptably early points in life to intervene. Timely efforts at prevention are
vital for limiting harm from AD and given the logic of EI is that, in presence of risk, earlier is
better, one might assume that earliest is best. This may or may not be the case; however,
the permissibility of intervening in different ways at different stages of life is complex and
turns on numerous contextual factors. We consider the particular ethical implications of
intervening at different points in the life course, presenting a valuable resource for negotiating clinical and policy implications of EI in AD. | en |