I REMEMBER my suspicion and annoyance, fifteen years ago, when the term "Alzheimer's disease" was first achieving currency. It seemed to me another instance of the medicalizationof human experience, the latest entry in the ever-expanding nomenclature of victimhood. To my mother's news about my old employer I replied: "What you describe sounds like the same old Erika, only quite a bit worse, and that's not how Alzheimer's is supposed to work, is it? I spend a few minutesevery month fretting about ordinary mental illness being trendily misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's.