“This is not going to be your typical story about Alzheimer’s disease,” explained Nightline co-anchor Terry Moran. “…You get to come to my office and watch me spit in a tube.”
And so began Moran’s personal tale of his quest to discover whether Alzheimer’s disease might one day control his life, just as it had his mother’s not that many years ago.
By spitting into a special tube and shipping his saliva sample to Navigenics, Moran was able to experience first-hand one of the greatest breakthroughs in modern medicine – the ability to size up his genetic code and learn his personal genetic risk for a disease he has long abhorred.
“My moment of truth,” he told the cameras, as he prepared to get the results of his Navigenics genetic test. “I wanted to face my fears...”
Wednesday night, Moran shared his personal experience with genetic testing with millions of viewers.
The decision to undergo genetic testing was not one that he took lightly. But it was a sensible one, Moran explained. “It is a big step to do this, but it is a step that you can take. You can take charge of your future.”
Navigenics assesses a person’s genetic risk of acquiring many diseases, not just Alzheimer’s, most of which can be successfully battled if detected early – or, in some cases, even prevented entirely.
“That’s a point we have to reinforce over and over again. This is not your destiny,” Dr. Vance Vanier, Navigenics’ Chief Medical Officer, told Moran. “These are new risk factors, just like high blood pressure and high cholesterol.”
Genetic risk often can be mitigated through positive lifestyle changes and targeted prevention plans.
Elissa Levin, the director of genetic counseling at Navigenics, went over Moran’s results with him.
With a 19 percent lifetime risk, Moran does have a greater chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease than the average man.
But he took the news in stride.
“It could have been worse. That’s one way of looking at it,” he said. “But it also feels empowering.”
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Alzheimer’s is more frightening than cancer to me. I wonder what the cost is of this test?