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Unless we do something to prevent it, over the next 40 years we’re facing an epidemic of neurologic diseases on a global scale. A cheery thought. On this map, every country that’s colored blue has more than 20 percent of its population over the age of 65. This is the world we live in. And this is the world your children will live in.除非我们采取措施加以预防，否则在接下来的40年里，我们将面临一场全球范围的神经系统疾病大流行。多么令人振奋的消息。在这张地图上，所有被涂成蓝色的国家，其65岁以上人口都超过了20%。这就是我们生活的世界，也将是你子女生活的世界。

For 12,000 years, the distribution of ages in the human population has looked like a pyramid, with the oldest on top. It’s already flattening out. By 2050, it’s going to be a column and will start to invert. This is why it’s happening. The average lifespan’s more than doubled since 1840, and it’s increasing currently at the rate of about five hours every day. And this is why that’s not entirely a good thing: because over the age of 65, your risk of getting Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease will increase exponentially.在人类历史上的12,000年里，人口年龄结构一直呈金字塔形，最年长者位于顶部。如今，这种结构已经开始趋于平坦。到2050年，它将变成柱状结构，甚至开始倒转。其原因在于，自1840年以来，人类的平均寿命已经翻了一倍，目前仍以每天大约增加五小时的速度在延长。而这并不完全是件好事：因为65岁以后，罹患阿尔茨海默症或帕金森症的风险会呈指数增长。

By 2050, there’ll be about 32 million people in the United States over the age of 80, and unless we do something about it, half of them will have Alzheimer’s disease and three million more will have Parkinson’s disease. Right now, those and other neurologic diseases -- for which we have no cure or prevention -- cost about a third of a trillion dollars a year.到2050年，美国将有大约3200万人超过80岁，如果我们不采取行动，其中一半人将患有阿尔茨海默症，还有三百万人将患帕金森症。目前，这些无法治愈或预防的神经系统疾病，每年已花费约三千亿美元。

It will be well over a trillion dollars by 2050. Alzheimer’s disease starts when a protein that should be folded up properly misfolds into a kind of demented origami. So one approach we’re taking is to try to design drugs that function like molecular Scotch tape, to hold the protein into its proper shape. That would keep it from forming the tangles that seem to kill large sections of the brain when they do.到2050年，这项花费将超过一万亿美元。阿尔茨海默症的起始是某种原本应当正常折叠的蛋白质，错误地折叠成一种“痴呆折纸”状态。因此，我们采取的其中一种策略是研发一种类似分子胶带的药物，使蛋白质保持在正确的结构中，从而阻止其形成那些会破坏大脑大片区域的缠结。

Interestingly enough, other neurologic diseases which affect very different parts of the brain also show tangles of misfolded protein, which suggests that the approach might be a general one, and might be used to cure many neurologic diseases, not just Alzheimer’s disease. There’s also a fascinating connection to cancer here, because people with neurologic diseases have a very low incidence of most cancers. And this is a connection that most people aren’t pursuing right now, but which we’re fascinated by.有趣的是，其他影响大脑不同部位的神经系统疾病，也表现出类似的蛋白质错误折叠缠结现象，这表明这种治疗方法可能具有普适性，或许不仅可以治疗阿尔茨海默症，也能用于其他神经类疾病。此外，还有一个令人着迷的联系：患有神经系统疾病的人，其患大多数癌症的几率非常低。虽然目前很少有人深入研究这一联系，但我们对此深感兴趣。

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