This article aims to problematize the «personhood movement» in Alzheimer care. The recent history of this movement, which aims to rescue «the person within», is explicitly formulated against a biomedical approach. The latter is conceived as negating personhood by emphasizing cognition, rationality, reflexivity and autonomy. It will be argued that the changing notions of personhood in Alzheimer disease and other forms of dementia extend life during life. This is related to what social scientists have called for a long time a «social death». Practices directed towards personhood can be understood as the cultural negotiations around a bio-social death which, nevertheless, have their own shortcomings and unquestioned common sense.