There is an inflation of meetings and it is becoming less and less attractive to go to conferences because not much new research is presented. Therefore I believe that it is enough to have a big conference like ICAD every second year.

View all comments by Manfred Windisch

I agree with Dr. Windisch. The conference schedule for AD and PD researchers is tight as it is and adding more conferences will not do any good to science. Also, the negative environmental impact of transporting 5,000 participants across continents should be considered.

View all comments by Martin Ingelsson

The ICAD meetings have a central role by combining the best preclinical and clinical research activities covering Alzheimer and related disorders. This central position will definitively be diluted by running the conference every year.

View all comments by Hans Basun

I don't think an annual conference is a good idea. Having more frequent meetings won't speed up breakthroughs - it simply diverts researchers' time away from designing and executing important experiments. As a consequence the standard of presentations at an annual meeting are likely to be of an incremental nature.

View all comments by Dominic Walsh

I have to agree with the general sentiment that this is one meeting too many. The field doesn't move fast enough to warrant a major conference every year. I anticipate that the quality will go down dramatically. Also, a good portion of us go to the AD/PD meeting which (until this year) alternates with ICAD.

View all comments by M. Paul Murphy

I believe the decision of ICAD to occur annually is not in best interest of the field. Having the meeting every other year has worked well in conjunction with various other meetings in this and related fields. There are already an abundance of meetings directly or indirectly related to AD. This will diminish the importance of ICAD and will likely result in a diluted meeting.

View all comments by David Holtzman

I do not think it is good to put an ICAD meeting so close to the AD/PD meeting. This will split the audience. Moreover, like with everything, quantity dilutes quality. I do not see what ICAD believes to gain at the scientific level from more meetings.

View all comments by Bart De Strooper

The Alzheimer's Association derives substantial publicity from ICAD. The Association may be integrating its corporate identity and branding with ICAD, and may gain donations and revenue that it might not have gotten from a biannual meeting. Annualizing ICAD appears more as a business case than a scientific one. Large non-profits such as the AHA, ADA, American Psychiatric Association, can gain substantial revenue from the meetings they put on. As long as stakeholders, donors, and pharmaceutical companies pay, it will be a sound decision. Unfortunately, a yearly ICAD may marginalize the smaller AD meetings.

Despite most of us not thinking an annual ICAD is a good idea, many of us will participate anyway. Our group, for example, will submit abstracts and proposals for the Vienna meeting by the February 2 deadline even if it means forcing some things, because not to do so means we don’t play. So an annual ICAD may be a good bet for the Alzheimer’s Association—provided, that is, that the economy holds.

View all comments by Lon Schneider

When discussing whether more frequent conferences are needed, we would do well to remember recent calls in the scientific community to reduce conference numbers because of their environmental/climate change impacts. For example, please refer to the commentary in Trends in Genetics by Hervé Philippe.

View all comments by Michael Lardelli

As immediate past chair of the National Medical and Scientifc Advisory Council, my bias toward the Alzheimer's Association goes without saying.

The surprising thing to me about the reaction to "ICAD going annual" is that ICAD already went annual, several years ago, when the International Conference on Prevention of Dementia was founded. Attendance at ICPD has been strong; reviews have been largely favorable.

The two changes are that the "P" is now an "A", and the "ICAD" meeting will not always be held in D.C. as it has been in its previous iterations as "ICPD".

The points raised are thoughtful and understandable, but I think that this ship has sailed.

View all comments by Samuel Gandy

I agree with the general sentiment expressed here, that this meeting is one too many in 2009. Sam (Gandy) is right that previous annual meetings have worked. However the environment today is different. We now have more meetings. The ADPD meeting is now much stronger, and to have two large meetings (ADPD and ICAD) just a few months apart and only 250 km apart (150 miles for the metrically challenged) is unfortunate. Scientific meetings should be based on the need to report scientific progress, not be scheduled for reasons of fund raising. How can the field have moved forward significantly in 4 months?

View all comments by David Small

I believe that scientific activity now is developing results more strongly than it did previously. The occurrence of ICAD on an annual basis is a chance to integrate the scientific knowledge.

View all comments by Farhan Ul Haq Subhani

I think the ICAD should be scheduled every other year. It is extremely expensive and most scientists working at universities cannot afford it.

View all comments by Magdalena Sastre