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Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

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Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#111

Post by mseidl »

entropy_ wrote: post #38

My wife's family has a different disease running through it, though one with very similar outcomes. Huntington's. It's genetic and dominant (so a parent having it means 50/50 for the children). Average age of onset is 38. Symptoms are a mixture of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's (both dementia and motor control issues). Her uncle was diagnosed at 38, her mother at 50. I wasn't around for the first one, but have been ther…

Sorry you had to go through that. It really sucks. My mom died from hd, and I have it too.

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#112

Post by m_mueller »

st26 wrote: post #86
m_mueller wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that currently just a matter of legality and cost? You can already test for trisomy syndromes by sequencing a bit of the mother's blood around week 10 and isolating the embryo's chromosomes statistically - that probably takes a very fault tolerant kind of sequencing, but throw in an order of magnitude more money or a couple more years of cost reductions and you're there.

Not all sunshine & roses. Here's a dark factoid for you- my memory is a bit fuzzy on when you chose mother's blood vs amniotic fluid sample for the test, but at the time I learned about all this, the odds of taking the amniotic fluid sample causing spontaneous abortion, were higher than the odds of the fetus having the more common trisomy conditions. For any particular fetus, the test was more risky than the disease.

The test I’m referring to only uses blood from the mother, thus it should be risk free.

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#113

Post by m_mueller »

jessaustin wrote: post #94
quotemstr wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but at ten weeks, all you can do is abort, which means it's only practical to screen for a few different genetic flaws this way, particularly if you expect some of them to be bad Mendelian inheritance and not some kind of rare structural flaw. Suppose you want to screen out four recessive traits and each one is inherited with probability 1/4, the probability of rolling a good combination is (3/4)^4 = ~30%. If…

You're still flushing all the other embryos down the drain. It doesn't seem as awful as lots of other shit that happens every day, but it's certainly sketchy enough that I wouldn't do it. Humans are not livestock.

Can you define what’s the moral difference against trisomy prescreeners? Or are you against these too? Honest question btw.

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#114

Post by Jaruzel »

creep wrote: post #28

Goddammit. I am going to cry. This was a wonderful piece. Empathy in every detail, while still being open enough to satisfy a reader's curiosity. It read like a book and I accidentally began to feel a kinship with the characters.

Yup me too.

Both my grandfathers had Alzheimer's. I don't talk to my mother anymore (who is 68) so I don't know how she is doing, and my father (70) seems to be OK so far, but he's always been a bit 'scatty', so early signs would probably be hard to detect. I'm in my mid 40s but I've long had a lingering fear that Alzheimer’s will get me at some point. I find it absolutely terrifying at the prospect of losing who I am. On and off I tinker with ways of capturing who I am in some way, or regularly think of ways I could invent support devices to assist me when my brain goes to mush. I am definitely preoccupied with this topic. I doubt though, that I'll ever come up with anything to help; I'm simply not clever enough. I am less intelligent today, than I was yesterday. The anti-depression drugs probably don't help in that regard either.

This is why I come to HN every day... The richness of the topics covered, and the knowledge that the comments section is a safe place to share...

Please pardon my self-reflection.

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#115

Post by Jaruzel »

ddingus wrote: post #101
aurbano wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read “Buddhism, plain and simple”? We share many ideas and have gone through a similar awakening. As most of the people commenting here, I wish we could all gather around a coffee table to discuss that book and others... Please, if you haven’t read it, consider doing so :)

I will. Have not. Thanks. That gathering would be epic, very high value. I was touched by this. Made me think of things I had set aside. A little dismayed I got negative votes. Was just sharing. Maybe unwise, but like I said, Jo and what he is experiencing... Yeah, a gathering to just chat, share, good, bad, would have high value.

I have also just put a (used) copy in my Amazon basket.

@ddingus - ignore the haters. I also shared elsewhere on this thread and fully expect to take a vote hit. Sharing shouldn't be about other people, it's about you. If there's anything this whole thread and linked article should tell us, it's that we are all individual people with our own histories and personalities, and each one of us is just as precious as every other.

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#116

Post by ido »

danieltillett wrote: post #108
mattigames wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the only end of it is gonna be when people with such diseases stop having children, but just pointing out such an obvious solution generates all kinds of scorn from the people you are talking to, they seem to immediately think of "eugenics" and every other bad word and imagine you running a concentration camp... and not just people voluntarily using birth control to avoid the suffering of their own offspring tha…

Eugenics has two side - discouraging certain people to have fewer (or no) children and encouraging others to have more. We seem to be obsessed with the fewer side and don’t look much at the more side. The most powerful eugenics force in history is the modern education system. It is extremely effective in identifying those with high levels of abstract reasoning and strongly discouraging them from having children. Gets…

In East Germany university students were encouraged to have children in an attempt to do just that.

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#117

Post by jeswin »

mattigames wrote: post #49
entropy_ wrote: post #38

My wife's family has a different disease running through it, though one with very similar outcomes. Huntington's. It's genetic and dominant (so a parent having it means 50/50 for the children). Average age of onset is 38. Symptoms are a mixture of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's (both dementia and motor control issues). Her uncle was diagnosed at 38, her mother at 50. I wasn't around for the first one, but have been ther…

Yeah the only end of it is gonna be when people with such diseases stop having children, but just pointing out such an obvious solution generates all kinds of scorn from the people you are talking to, they seem to immediately think of "eugenics" and every other bad word and imagine you running a concentration camp... and not just people voluntarily using birth control to avoid the suffering of their own offspring tha…

Your solution might be worth discussing if the genetic mutation leads to a birth defect. But for later onset (like >35 years in this case), we'll be in 2050s. Even with a pessimistic view of things, we might find a cure for many/most of the diseases that affect us today. Honestly, I can't even imagine what the 2050s are going to look like.

The problem with the suggestion (or that conversation) is that it creates guilt in people carrying that disease for no fault of theirs. No I am not religious.

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#118

Post by dannyw »

Beefin wrote: post #77

Dr Rhonda Patrick and Peter Attia are two very prominent researchers that I follow in longitivity and neural degeneration. they discuss APOE4 as being a strong indicator of Alzheimer’s susceptibility. If you have It in your genome it’s scary but also a lot of research goes into preventative means. For example anti inflammation diet is a strong factor because any diseases especially Alzheimer’s is triggered by chronic…

For those who want to interpret their own results:

Search your report for rs429358; also reported as gs246.

(T; T) is the normal variant.

(C; C) or (C; T) is estimated to increase your chances by "12x for late-onset Alzheimer's and 61x for early-onset disease"

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#119

Post by mkam039 »

Beefin wrote: post #77

Dr Rhonda Patrick and Peter Attia are two very prominent researchers that I follow in longitivity and neural degeneration. they discuss APOE4 as being a strong indicator of Alzheimer’s susceptibility. If you have It in your genome it’s scary but also a lot of research goes into preventative means. For example anti inflammation diet is a strong factor because any diseases especially Alzheimer’s is triggered by chronic…

It's difficult to find any scientific paper's by these prominent researchers. Where would one find those?

As far as I know, there is no concrete evidence that proves any causal relationship between inflammation and neurodegenation.

Re: Having Alzheimer’s at 38 (2015)

#120

Post by Thiez »

coldtea wrote: post #78
mattigames wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the only end of it is gonna be when people with such diseases stop having children, but just pointing out such an obvious solution generates all kinds of scorn from the people you are talking to, they seem to immediately think of "eugenics" and every other bad word and imagine you running a concentration camp... and not just people voluntarily using birth control to avoid the suffering of their own offspring tha…

> Yeah the only end of it is gonna be when people with such diseases stop having children, but just pointing out such an obvious solution generates all kinds of scorn from the people you are talking to Perhaps because not having existed can be equally as tragic as having existing but having a disease? Lots of people are living today who were born blind, or with this or that genetic tendency. And they live their lives…

Doesn't that same argument (about not having existed at all) apply to all forms of birth control, including abstinence? Almost every time a woman menstruates the 'tragedy' of someone not existing has potentially occurred. To call this a tragedy at all seems absurd to me, and no, it is nowhere near equally tragic as living with many hereditary diseases.

I think there are arguments to be made that not every hint of imperfection should be eliminated (who gets to decide what imperfection means?), but your argument isn't one of those.

If I had never existed (for any reason) nobody would be able to miss me, least of all me. My parents would have tried again a month later and gotten someone else. Perhaps someone better, we'll never know.

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