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There was news about the brain, young and old--Attention Deficit Disorder in children and Alzheimer's Disease in the elderly.
The hook for the Alzheimer's coverage was the fate of the 55-year marriage of Sandra Day O'Connor. From the Supreme Court, NBC's Pete Williams relayed the reporting by his network's Phoenix affiliate KPNX-TV on the former Justice's husband John, an Alzheimer's patient, now living in a care facility in Arizona. Their son Scott revealed that his father has found a new love with a fellow patient: "He is happy, you know, visiting with his girlfriend, sitting on the porch swing, holding hands." David Wright (no link) took A Closer Look for ABC, reminding us that late life love amid a forgotten marriage was the plot of the recent Julie Christie movie Away From Her. NBC's Williams noted that Day O'Connor has "declined to comment--but without her cooperation her husband's story would never be told." Alzheimer's experts told Williams that such romances "actually happen often."
CBS had its in-house physician Jon LaPook lead with ADD. He explained the NIH research that used MRI scans to examine the neurology of children diagnosed with the disorder. It indicated that ADD is not a brain disease; instead it is the symptom of slower development. There is a "three to five year lag" in pre-teen children; "by mid-adolescence that gap has narrowed." ABC anchor Charles Gibson consulted his network's in-house physician Timothy Johnson (subscription required). He speculated that this finding may lead to different treatments for ADD children--"a better school environment, more attention, shorter assignments…rather than simply go to medicines."
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