If I were a statistician tucked away in an NHS backroom, I might well curse the day the health service was founded. There, on my spreadsheets, would be clear evidence that the generations who were children when it was set up in 1948 and born in its early days have lived a very long time.

Those in their seventies and eighties have kept their teeth for longer, survived illnesses from measles to bronchitis, and the public health campaigns against smoking have seen fewer of them die of lung cancer. But now these early NHS babies are becoming a bit of a nuisance.

All the aches and pains of old age mean they are becoming expensive individuals for the health service, and especially if they succumb to dementia. Around one in 11 people in this country do so. Thankfully for those with this statistical, utilitarian mindset, the drugs spending watchdog, the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE), is ensuring spending won't suddenly soar any higher. It has decided that a new drug that slows the pace of Alzheimer's Disease is too expensive to be made available on the NHS.

Donanemab has been recognised as a turning point in the treatment of Alzheimer's, for it slows the progress of this terrible condition, which robs people of memory and cognitive ability. Some would say it makes life barely worth living. But NICE has decided that it is too expensive for too little benefit. And with the numbers of people living with Alzheimer's in the UK set to rise from one million today to 1.4 million in 2040, the demand and the need for treatment - as well as the cost - are likely to keep going up. It is easy to understand why the bean counters don't favour drugs like Donanemab.

That approach, though, shows how narrow calculations are about treatments for dementia. NICE fails to include the care, including from families, of those suffering from it. It does not take into account the privately supplied care and the volunteers who help by visiting those who endure this blight on their lives - care that would not be so essential if a drug helped delay the impact of Alzheimer's.

Even more disturbing, though, is the growing sense that the older generation is no longer a priority. From the cutting of winter fuel payments, to the growing acceptance that assisted dying is the right choice for people wanting to lessen the burden on others and the NHS, to this limit on drug spending, a culture is emerging that sees those who are older as worth very little.

These are people who have, according to the utilitarians, outlived their usefulness, ignoring that they might deserve some payback for the millions upon millions of pounds previously paid by them in tax and national insurance contributions. It is only when they are dead that their usefulness is recognised again: Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to up inheritance tax in the Budget next week, even though it is already charged at 40 per cent on the property, possession and money of someone who has died, above a £325,000 threshold.

Of course, the very rich will have all manner of trusts and other devices to avoid these tax pitfalls, just as the ultra-affluent will be able to pay privately for Donanemab. NICE may have decided that the drug is not value for NHS money but it is decreed safe enough to use. So if you can afford it, you can take advantage of it.

And advantageous it certainly is: research has showed that it slows the advance of Alzheimer's by 35 per cent. That means that sufferers could live at home for an extra two years before needing full-time nursing care. It is two more years of recognising your son or daughter and taking delight in your grandchildren - priceless gifts that no NICE official or NHS statistician could ever truly quantify.

Professor Sir John Hardy, the chairman of molecular biology of neurological disease at the UCL Institute of Neurology and one of the world's leading researchers on dementia, told this paper that NICE has come down on the wrong side of the argument on Donanemab.

The argument is, on the surface, about cost. It goes deeper than that. It is about who we as a society value. It is as if we have got to the stage where we see the elderly as akin to something unwanted in a supermarket: past their sell-by date.