Name: Valley of Forgetting
Start: 2025-12-14T13:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-12-14T15:00:00-05:00

For hundreds of years, the residents of isolated rural villages around Medellin, Columbia have been losing their memories, before inevitably, their lives are cut short in their forties or early fifties. Jennie Erin Smith was drawn in by this medical mystery, and spent nearly a decade deeply immersed in the lives of these people, living with them, attending doctors visits, funerals, and autopsies. She also closely followed the doctors and researchers, who overcame incredible challenges to pursue the science behind early onset Alzheimer’s.
![]()A graduate of Columbia University, Jennie Erin Smith writes on medicine, biology, wildlife, natural history and Latin America. She also contributes several pieces a year to the New York Times Science section, and writes regularly for several medical journals, primarily summarizing research in oncology and neurology. She also writes a semimonthly column on regulatory affairs in Latin America for the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society. Jennie has also written in the past for the Wall Street Journal, the Times Literary Supplement, The New Yorker, and others. She is currently Senior Biomedicine Reporter for Science magazine. Her book Stolen World was selected among the best books of the year by the New Yorker and the Washington Post,

This program begins at 1:00 PM, both in-person and via Zoom. The in-person event will be held at Pinnacle Living, 45 Forts Ferry Road, Latham, NY. IT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Light refreshments will be available starting at 12:30 PM. Please bring your own beverage.

**If you wish to attend via Zoom and are not a current member of CDHS**, email your request to [CDHS.Albany@gmail.com](mailto:CDHS.Albany@gmail.com) no later than Friday, December 12th. \*\*\*The RSVP on here does NOT work.\*\*\*
You MUST e mail a request for the link. It is useless to register on here. E mail for the link.

The Capital District Humanist Society provides a supportive community for exchanging ideas, heightening our knowledge of the world and ourselves, fostering moral and ethical growth, and promoting the principles of non-theistic humanism. CDHS is a member organization for people with humanist values. Our values include commitment to free inquiry, rational thought, life-long education, democracy, social concern, and fellowship.
To learn more about us, please go to: www.humanistsociety.net

Fred Levine

Capital District Humanist Society

Religion & Spirituality

Humanism

Separation of Church and State

Free Thinker

Freethinkers Humanists & Atheists

Penny Stoever

Alan Koslow

Younus Samadzada

Rene Bonilla

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Valley of Forgetting

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Capital District Humanist Society

Valley of Forgetting

Capital District Humanist Society

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