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Print:
This essay originally appeared in STAT News on November 24, 2025 as part of the Neurotransmissions column.
As Peter strode across 20th Street, his mother’s apartment building came into view. Her one-bedroom home in Philadelphia’s historic Rittenhouse Square area was a four-minute walk from the three-story row house where he lived with his wife and two children.
His pace was brisk because he was a man in a hurry, busy with the demanding work of middle-aged life as a father to two grade schoolers, husband to a wife, and leader of a startup medical device company. This visit was part of his fourth job.
Peter is one among the 11 million Americans performing the work of caregiving. His responsibility is his mother, who is one of the 6 million people living with disabling cognitive impairments caused by dementia. Today’s caregiving task — a consequence of escalating challenges in her ability to use devices and appliances — was peculiar.
He had to change the channel on his mother Angela’s television.
For as long as humans have been, they’ve cared for each other. Anthropologists’ studies of the skeletal remains of severely disabled Neanderthals are compelling prehistoric evidence of care and caregiving. The remains show disabilities that would have prevented them from performing life’s most basic activities. Someone must have cared for them.
Read the full essay here.
Author
Jason Karlawish, MD
Professor, Medicine and Professor, Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine; Co-Director, Penn Memory Center
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