Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has been my experience more-or-less as well. Any graduate student that does anything even alzheimer's adjacent at the school I used to work at absolutely had to have a certain two researchers on their dissertation committee and they would 100% not let you progress without throwing a bone to beta-amyloid in your proposal (along with heavily pushing you to pander to some of their personal pet theories). It's a sun…
It's the same with autoimmunity. Some researchers are obsessed with genetics. But it's mostly about self misclassification due to infections and dysbiosis. Luckily, some top journals have started accepting this, but it's still an uphill battle against the establishment: * Type 1 diabetes: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.18.881433v1 * Multiple sclerosis: https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/10/462/eaat43…
How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
331–340 of 398 posts
Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#332The article is not quite updated. Biogen did end their phase 3 trial of the amyloid-beta antibody Aducanumab early, citing lack of efficacy. A closer look at the numbers however appeared to reveal that they shouldn't have. And Biogen is now filing Aducanumab for approval by FDA. [1] All in all, there is no question that amyloid-beta is a key part of Alzheimer. Already Alois Alzheimer, when first describing Alzheimer'…
I like the work that Cortexyme is doing [1] here:
But in 2019, evidence pointed the finger elsewhere: at
Porphyromonas gingivalis, a type of bacteria involved
in gum disease. Research ... suggests that beta-amyloid
is a symptom, not a cause of the condition. Instead, it
may be the toxins released by P. gingivalis, called
gingipains, that result in the brain damage that brings
on the disease.
(I posted the story earlier today [2], but it didn't end up on the front page.)
[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24432613-800-im-testi...
Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In this day and age, feeding into the narrative that science is just another competitive team sport where people compete with whatever means necessary is downright dangerous. I think that narrative is correct. We can't fix the problem if we don't discuss it. The whole "I believe in science" thing (which you seem to be pushing) is really quite silly. Funding is a political game and the people who are best at politic…
> Funding is a political game and the people who are best at politics tend to be the worst at research (and vice-versa). I'd be interested in a compare and contrast with AIDs research. Same time frame but AIDs researchers threw everything but the kitchen sink at it and made progress. You got to wonder one field was dominated by status seekers with fat ego's and the other people working on a disease that mostly afflic…
After reading “And the Band Played On”, early HIV research had enormous ego collisions between Robert Gallo in the US and Luc Montagnier in France.
Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the same with autoimmunity. Some researchers are obsessed with genetics. But it's mostly about self misclassification due to infections and dysbiosis. Luckily, some top journals have started accepting this, but it's still an uphill battle against the establishment: * Type 1 diabetes: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.18.881433v1 * Multiple sclerosis: https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/10/462/eaat43…
Also, psoriasis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6369634/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30222202 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29908580 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6881942/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6048199/ etc.
I went on a soylent-like diet a few years ago and my psoriasis completely went away for the first time ever. I also felt better than ever.
Eventually I went back to just eating regular food and within a month it was coming back along with not feeling as great.
I have still never been able to nail it down, and my dermatologist is pretty dismissive of it.
Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, psoriasis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6369634/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30222202 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29908580 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6881942/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6048199/ etc.
I went on a soylent-like diet a few years ago and my psoriasis completely went away for the first time ever. I also felt better than ever. Eventually I went back to just eating regular food and within a month it was coming back along with not feeling as great. I have still never been able to nail it down, and my dermatologist is pretty dismissive of it.
Your dermatologist doesn't know any better than you in this case, though I think he's wrong to be dismissive.
This stuff about the gut-skin axis has only been coming out the last 2-3 years, although there are a few lone researchers who have been thinking this for decades.
For myself, I experienced roughly 80% reduction in symptoms after switching to a strict vegetarian diet two years ago, and it's stayed that way.
Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for the feedback regarding how I come across. Next time I will try to include more specific detail in the OP that hopefully does not upset people. I've found that a vague introduction protects me from down-votes, but perhaps there is a way to talk about some details without that happening. The illness is chronic mercury toxicity and the treatment is chelation therapy. I know a man who reversed his dementia…
You're really not helping your case by citing two people who come across as even more shifty. Piling on more low-quality evidence like this just raises more questions and doubts, and gives the impression that you either cannot identify credible evidence or that none exists.
Agreed. The first source cites his own talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBTr9iQQuq4, in which he starts out with the disclaimer:
> It [his cure for Alzheimer's] isn't a proven reality so if you're looking for double-blind clinical studies of this you're gonna be disappointed. But if you're willing to suspend your disbelief and try something as simple as giving your family member without Alzheimer's disease something like coconut oil and B-complex vitamins and see if it works, you may be very pleased.
Suspending disbelief should not be a requirement to make a persuasive argument about a scientific subject. This guy just smacks of snake oil salesman through and through.
Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#337> there is not even a disease-slowing treatment. True-ish, but Aricept is generally seen and used as a disease-slowing treatment (even if the data is inconclusive, it is perceived this way by physicians). > In patients with Alzheimer's Dementia participating in clinical trials, administration of single daily doses of 5 mg or 10 mg of ARICEPT produced steady-state inhibition of acetylcholinesterase activity (measured…
I'm guessing the perception that it slowed Alzheimer's is because some patients were misdiagnosed. Aricept can help with falls in Parkinson's patients with balance problems, and in my experience seems to help with arousal. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3013493/ Accurately diagnosing the elderly is difficult. My grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's 15-20 years ago, which was likely inaccurate. At…
Yes, until recently there was no way to confirm Alzheimer with certainty until after death. But recent imaging solutions make it possible to see the amyloid plaques in living subjects.
Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the same with autoimmunity. Some researchers are obsessed with genetics. But it's mostly about self misclassification due to infections and dysbiosis. Luckily, some top journals have started accepting this, but it's still an uphill battle against the establishment: * Type 1 diabetes: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.18.881433v1 * Multiple sclerosis: https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/10/462/eaat43…
Are you saying many diseases we believe to be autoimmune may be caused by infections?
A large percentage of cancers have infectious origins as well.
Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does the medical establishment benefit from not curing your illness?
The benefit is in punting off complicated case quicker, because the insurance pay out is the same, regardless if you spend 30 seconds or 30 minutes on the patient. There is often nothing you can do to help anyway, but you can certainly bill 250 bucks every 5 minutes, and many, many do so. In fact, some physicians will not even accept complicated cases, especially if they involve chronic pain treated with opiates, tha…
> And that is the reason why universal healthcare will fail, and why the NHS has a private tier, and routinely pays for treatments outside of the UK, done in private hospitals.
This does not logically follow from what you said at all. The NHS has not "failed", nor does it have a private tier - it commissions some treatments from private clinics for purely political reasons. These treatments are still completely free to the patient.
An NHS hospital isn't receiving insurance payouts, so it has an incentive to treat people quickly and efficiently, with complete cures being preferred over long-term management when possible.
Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure
#340This article is 100% true. My first job out of college 10 years ago was in a lab focused on Alzheimer’s research. Our Principle Investigator made an art of writing grant applications for studies that would appear to be in line with mainstream theory, but were really intended to test theories he actually thought were worth testing, presented in results as an “interesting” aside. He believed the amyloid theory had been…
Looks like a perfect example of the dynamics Kuhn brilliantly described in his famous "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". That's one book that everyone needs to read.