[ti:Bill Gates Gives $100 Million to Fight Alzheimer's Disease] [00:00.00]如果您也喜欢 恒星英语学习网 www.hxen.com 请与您的朋友分享... [00:00.04]This is What's Trending Today... [00:03.36]Billionaire Bill Gates has made a $100-million investment [00:09.48]to help researchers find a cure for Alzheimer's. [00:14.96]The brain disease causes people to slowly lose their memory [00:20.24]and mental abilities as they grow old. [00:24.32]Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, said Monday [00:28.88]he has given $50 million to the Dementia Discovery Fund. [00:35.52]The London-based fund aims to bring business and government together [00:41.48]to seek treatments for the brain-wasting disease. [00:46.32]Another $50 million will go to start-up groups [00:51.16]working in Alzheimer's research, Gates said. [00:55.23]The money is a personal donation and not from his charitable organization, [01:02.04]the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. [01:05.68]"Bill Gates" trended worldwide on social media Monday. [01:10.68]Dementia, of which Alzheimer's is the most common form, [01:16.00]affects close to 50 million people worldwide. [01:20.76]It is expected to affect more than 131 million [01:26.52]by the year 2050, the Alzheimer's Disease International group says. [01:33.72]"It's a huge problem, a growing problem, [01:37.36]and the scale of the tragedy - even for the people who stay alive - is very high," [01:44.44]Gates told the Reuters news agency. [01:48.08]Despite many years of research, scientists have not found a treatment [01:54.20]that can slow the progression of Alzheimer's. [01:58.20]Current drugs can do no more than ease some of the effects. [02:04.00]But Gates said he is hopeful that treatments can be found, [02:08.72]even if they might still be more than 10 years away. [02:13.56]Gates' usual health focus is on helping fight infectious diseases in poorer countries. [02:22.08]He said Alzheimer's became his mission partly for personal reasons, [02:27.68]and partly because it has been so difficult to find effective treatment. [02:34.60]Some men in his family have suffered from Alzheimer's, he said. [02:40.57]In a blog post about the investments, [02:44.72]Gates wrote, "I know how awful it is to watch people you love [02:50.20]struggle as the disease robs them of their mental capacity. [02:55.52]It feels a lot like you're experiencing a gradual death of the person that you knew." [03:02.60]And that's What's Trending Today... [03:04.88]I'm Ashley Thompson.如果您也喜欢 恒星英语学习网 www.hxen.com 请与您的朋友分享...