An imagined commencement address

By Nick Tayag

my sixty-zen’s WORtH

Strive to enhance your cooperative social skills. Connect with people who can help you do the task better. Understand and learn from people you perform with. Listen to other people’s life stories, even those who embody different identities, experiences, and beliefs.

This helps build your sense of empathy, the ability to put oneself in the shoes of another person. A good performer has the ability to imagine sympathetically the situation or predicament of another person. Don’t rush to judgment. Instead, find a way to help.

Don’t be obsessed with titles. Fancy titles such as President, CEO, COO, SVP, CFO and so on do not necessarily make you a leader. It’s the other way around: a leader makes the title he deserves.

abilities Award; Media Advocate Award; Manuel Agcaoili Employer of the Year Award (formerly Employer of the Year Award); Local Government Unit Award; Disability Friendly Establishment Award; Special Recognition Award; Filipino with Disability Award; and, the Apolinario Mabini Lifetime Achievement Award.

The President also commended the PFRD for promoting measures to prevent disability; protect and rehabilitate the disabled; and, pro-

“The Mabini Awards reminds us that disability does not define a person’s worth. Instead, it is a spark for innovation, resilience, and ingenuity that enables people to do better and to do more,” the President said.

“I thus thank this year’s Mabini Awardees for breaking down barriers and championing the rights of persons with disabilities. All of you are beacons of hope, lighting the path towards a society that fully embraces all,” he added.

Present during the conferment of awards were PFRD President Edgardo Garcia; Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri and his wife Audrey Tan-Zubiri who serves as chairperson of the 30th Apolinario Mabini Awards; and Jaime Silva, chairperson of the Screening Committee.

Second Alzheimer’s drug in pipeline can slow disease by

Few Months But With Safety Risk

By Lauran Neergaard AP Medical Writer

WASHInGTOn—Another

experimental Alzheimer’s drug can modestly slow patients’ inevitable worsening—by about four to seven months, researchers reported Monday.

ALL over the country, colleges and universities are holding their graduation exercises. It brings to mind one of the most quoted commencement speeches that was delivered by Steve Jobs of Apple at Stanford University a few years before he died from pancreatic cancer.

I never imagined myself delivering a commencement speech. But if I were invited to be a commencement speaker what would I tell today’s graduates?

What “words of practical wisdom” would I impart to young idealistic graduates?

Maybe I do have something to tell these young graduates who would soon be mugged by reality in the world out there. So kindly indulge me as I share a pocketful of caveats for members of today’s clueless graduating class: The ancient Romans have a peculiar way of greeting. So let me greet you the old Roman way: Ave Atque Vale! I salute you and I bid you goodbye (as in “go forth”).

After going through the gates of your school for the last time, you will all be compelled to perform and outdo each other on a big wide stage called “Real World.”

Since I have always been partial to literature, which is a treasury of valuable life lessons, I have come to look at life as theater. In one of his plays, William Shakespeare wrote: All the world’s a stage

And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts. Using the metaphor of life as the- ater, I hope to trigger something in you to help you find your destined role as well as become an outstanding performer.

First of all, you have to own your life. Iyo iyan. Ikaw ang may-ari ng sarili mo at ng buhay mo. As they say, ikaw na. Eksena mo yan! As the controversial writer Oscar Wilde once said: Don’t strive to be someone else. It’s already taken. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Huwag masyadong bilib sa sarili. You haven’t proven anything yet.

Make an honest list of your God-given talent and ability. What are your unique qualities, experiences and values? All these will prove valuable later on. They are the personal assets that you bring to your role that enables you to make a successful performance. Use them judiciously, like money in the bank.

If you have limitations and weaknesses, then moderate your ambitions. Refrain from taking on roles that exceed your grasp or ability. But having said that, don’t stop there. Improve yourself, and keep strengthening your weak areas.

Start with smaller roles first.

Huwag agaw-eksena (don’t be a scene stealer). Then as your ability grows, you get to perform the major roles.

Then there is timing. Wait for your turn behind the wings of the stage. Know when to enter a scene, when to say your lines and when to make an exit.

Learn to cooperate, interact and work with fellow performers and even subordinates and those in the lower ranks. Interacting with others in the workplace is like putting on a play or a dance piece together where performers cooperate towards a common purpose.

The new model of leadership is all about every single employee or worker showing initiative, resourcefulness, motivation, and drive in the work he does. This means, even the lowly messenger, utility man, fast-food server can be a leader. Unsung heroes do not need a fancy title to be agents of change and make a difference.

Do Everything With Passion. The deeper meaning of passion is what you are willing to sacrifice because you love it very much. Mother Teresa of Calcutta said: “not everybody can do great things but you can do small things with great passion and dedication.”

Fill your life with humor energy. As someone said: never take life seriously; nobody gets out alive. Humor gives you mental balance, and having a healthy sense of humor can increase your confidence in your own inner ability to adapt and embrace challenges and difficulties with feelings of hope and optimism.

Never stop learning. Graduation does not mean you’re through with learning. Learn something new every day! As inspirational writer Melody Joy puts it: “Life is like theatre. Each new day is a new scene with new acts and roles to portray. The sets always change...But the beauty in it is that every day, you are constantly learning who you are and how others around you are.”

Remember: “Life’s just too short to play small with your talents. And our world needs you rising to your best like never before” in the words of Robin Sharma, best-selling author of books from Canada.

Many years into the future, as the curtains start to close after your performance, how will people review your performance on the theater of life?

The answer lies in you. Beginning with the here and now.

Congratulations. Vale atque vale!

Eli Lilly and Co. is seeking Food and Drug Administration approval of donanemab. If cleared, it would be only the second Alzheimer’s treatment convincingly shown to delay the mind-robbing disease—after the recently approved Leqembi from Japanese drugmaker Eisai. “Finally there’s some hope, right, that we can talk about,” Lilly’s Dr. John Sims told reporters Monday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Amsterdam.

“We don’t cure the disease,” he said. “Diabetes doesn’t have a cure either—it doesn’t mean you can’t have very meaningful treatments for patients.”

Lilly announced in May that donanemab appeared to work, but on Monday the full results of a study of 1,700 patients was published by the Journal of the American Medical Association and presented at the Alzheimer’s conference.

Both donanemab and Leqembi are lab-made antibodies, administered by IV, that target one Alzheimer’s culprit, sticky amyloid buildup in the brain. And both drugs come with a serious safety concern—brain swelling or bleeding that in the Lilly study was linked to three deaths.

Scientists say while these drugs may mark a new era in Alzheimer’s therapy, huge questions remain about which patients should try them and how much benefit they’ll really notice.

“The modest benefits would likely not be questioned by patients, clinicians or payers if amyloid antibodies were low risk, inexpensive and simple to administer. However, they are none of these,” Dr. Eric Widera of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in a JAMA editorial accompanying Lilly’s new data.

Lilly’s study enrolled people ages 60 to 85 who were in early stages of Alzheimer’s. Half received once-a-month infusions of donanemab and half dummy infusions for 18 months.

The study had a few twists. Patients were switched to dummy infusions if enough amyloid cleared out—something that happened to about half within a year.

And because amyloid alone doesn’t cause Alzheimer’s, researchers also tracked levels of another culprit in the brain— abnormal tau. More tau signals more advanced disease.

The results: Both groups declined during the 18-month study but overall those given donanemab worsened about 22 percent more slowly. Some patients fared better—those with low to medium tau levels saw a 35 percent slower decline, reflecting that the drug appears to work better in earlier stages of the disease. How much difference does that make? It means donanemab slowed patients’ worsening by about four to seven months, the JAMA report concluded.

Another way of measuring: Among the donanemab recipients with lower tau levels, 47 percent were considered stable a year into the study compared with 29 percent of those who got the dummy version. The main safety concern is brain swelling or bleeding, which often causes no symptoms but sometimes can be serious, even fatal. About a quarter of donanemab recipients showed evidence of that swelling, and about 20 percent had microbleeds.

Scientists already know that patients getting any amyloid-targeted therapy need repeat brain scans to check for those side effects—a costly and timeconsuming hurdle.

Widera noted that the possibility of stopping donanemab treatment at least temporarily in people who respond well would help limit some of those challenges. For comparison, Leqembi is given by IV every two weeks and researchers didn’t test a similar stoppage.

It’s too soon to know if some patients might need to resume donanemab, said Lilly’s Dr. Mark Mintun. But the amyloid “doesn’t come back with any sort of vengeance,” he said, speculating that might take several years.

Another concern: More than 90 percent of the study’s participants were white, leaving little data about how other populations might respond, Alzheimer’s specialist Jennifer Manly of Columbia University wrote in JAMA.

Scientists have long tried and failed to slow Alzheimer’s with amyloid-targeting drugs—and the FDA’s contentious 2021 conditional approval of a drug named Aduhelm soon fizzled amid lack of evidence that it really worked. The approval of Leqembi and promising data for donanemab have reignited interest in attacking amyloid buildup.