Grey’s Anatomy: My favorite show for the past few years. I watch it religiously every Thursday and wait for what medical issues and diseases the patients in that episode are going to be experiencing. The show is about a doctor, Meredith Grey, who is starting out as a surgical intern at Seattle Grace Hospital, where her mother Ellis Grey was an award-winning and prestigious surgeon. It is found out that Ellis is suffering from Alzheimers and later passes away from the disease. In a later season, Meredith gets tested to see if she has the gene for Alzheimers and find out that unfortunately she has two marker for the disease. I often wondered how realistic this plot line was.
After doing some research, I found that the show’s writers and producers get in contact with the Hollywood Health and Society (HH&S). HH&S is a program at the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center that helps provide accurate medical information for health storylines in movies and TV Shows. For this plot line involving Meredith and genetics, the show reached out to Tina Wu, Ph.D., a professor in the Dept, of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. Wu then gave “an in-depth lesson” to the Grey’s Anatomy team on Genetics.
Wu gave them specific information on testing Personal Genetics. To read the information she gave to HH&S, go here.
Because Alzheimer’s had a large focus on the show for multiple seasons, I wanted to find out more about the genetics of Alzheimers and the accuracy of this plot line. Meredith’s mother Ellis, suffered from early onset Alzheimers. Early-Onset Alzheimers occurs in people ages 30-60. Many times, Early-Onset is caused by an inherited change in one of three genes, many times resulting in early-onset familial Alzheimer’s Disease, or FAD. According to the National Institute on Aging, “A child whose biological mother or father carries a genetic mutation for early-onset FAD has a 50/50 chance of inheriting that mutation.”
A scene from Grey’s Anatomy
With this information, there was a very strong chance that Meredith would carry a genetic marker for Alzheimer’s. The plot line was very much plausible in real life, and did stay medically accurate as well. I was surprised to see that this particular plot line stayed as medically accurate as it did, because of the way the show is set up. The show is a drama, so many times things are often over exaggerated or deal with very rare medical circumstances. However, this storyline involving Meredith Grey, genetics, and Early-Onset Alzheimers is very much a realistic situation and could occur in every day life.
Work’s Cited
I’m currently on season 11 of Grey’s Anatomy; it’s too addicting. Since my grandma recently passed from Alzheimer’s disease, it is a very touchy subject for me. After reading your post and seeing that my mom has a 50% chance of having the disease is quite alarming. To ease my nerves, I decided to research new treatment options that are being developed. An article published by Oxford Journal in 2013, suggested treating the memory loss with “stem cell-replacement therapy.” Many experiments were conducted to support this treatment option and have shown promising results. However, there is currently no cure for this devastating disease.