Twenty years' notice

A blood test that flags Alzheimer's risk two decades before the first symptom is anticipation in its purest form — and anticipation is the whole reason Tugboat exists. For about $200, p-Tau217 sees what's coming long before a missed appointment or a left-on stove ever does.

But every caregiver knows the harder half of that sentence. Knowing early is only a gift if you can do something with the knowing. Right now the prevention science is still catching up to the prediction science — so the test mostly hands a family time, not a cure. That's not nothing. Time is what lets you set up the paperwork, the conversations, the plan, before any of it becomes a 2 a.m. crisis.

The blindside is the cruelest part of this disease. A test that trades twenty years of blindside for twenty years of warning is worth paying attention.