Some years ago, my colleague and client Dr. Paul Aisen, an internationally recognized researcher of Alzheimer's disease and the director of the Alzheimer's Therapeutic Research Institute at USC, discovered that people with Alzheimer's all have elevated levels of the protein amyloid in their brains.

Following this discovery, clinical trials targeted amyloid in patients with Alzheimer's disease, but those trials failed: Intervening after the disease has already resulted in significant degeneration of the brain did not work.

Still, the relationship between AD and amyloid has become so established that elevated amyloid levels and mild or moderate cognitive impairment is now classified as pre-AD.

Thirty percent of Americans 65 and over have elevated levels of amyloid in their brains. The incubation period for Alzheimer's disease — the period during which you can have elevated amyloid levels but no symptoms — can be as long as 10 years, longer than the period of dementia.

In a study published by Dr. Aisen and his colleagues last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, healthy people with elevated amyloid levels were twice as likely to develop symptoms of AD than those who did not start out with elevated levels of amyloid.

After four years, 32 percent of those with elevated amyloid showed symptoms of dementia.

Analyzing a smaller group after 10 years showed 88 percent of those with elevated amyloid levels suffering significant mental decline, Aisen told me over the phone. Eighty-eight percent.

I was silent. I am not a doctor or scientist, but I recognize a public health crisis when I hear one.

In 2014, 15 percent of the population — 46 million people — were 65 or older. In 2050, that number will reach 22 percent, a total of 88 million people.

The answer?

Likening amyloid's relationship to Alzheimer's to cholesterol and heart attack, Dr. Aisen and other researchers have hypothesized that the key is to reduce or eliminate amyloid buildup before degeneration sets in — in other words, early intervention.

"To have the greatest impact on the disease, we need to intervene against amyloid, the basic molecular cause, as early as possible," Dr. Aisen says.

Clinical trials are underway around the world, of different drugs, different therapies. They all depend on one thing: us. We baby boomers, if we are to defeat this scourge, will have to be a generation of volunteers.

Dr. Aisen thinks the patients who volunteer for these clinical trials — people with elevated amyloid levels who agree to participate in studies where they might be given a drug that they don't actually need (because they might not develop dementia) or might not be given a drug that they could desperately need (because otherwise they will develop dementia) — are ensuring that their children will not face this scourge.

If you turn down the partisan bickering in the background, it is hard to think of anything we could do that is more important for our children. For if we fail, they are the ones who will bear our burden. And what a terrible one.

I do not know anyone who has not been touched by AD. We do our crossword puzzles, keep our minds active. But if biology is destiny, then we must be its masters.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.