Say you had a $80 million dollar budget. How would you deploy it to have maximum impact on Alzheimer’s?
In other words, what would you do if you were in Gates position?
Why I’m Digging Deep Into Alzheimer’s
171–180 of 192 posts
Re: Why I’m Digging Deep Into Alzheimer’s
#172Dear Bill, to spend money wise and efficiently I suggest that you look at the work of Dr Dale Bredesen. Dr Bredesen has fantastic results with his Alzheimer treatment and has published about it. In short, his treatment cures 9 out of 10 patients with mild Alzheimer. His scientific work is solid and a larger study is currently done. Check it out!
The majority of the successes I've seen on Bredesen's web site were against non-Alzheimer's dementia, caused by infection or nutritional problems.
Re: Why I’m Digging Deep Into Alzheimer’s
#173Re: Why I’m Digging Deep Into Alzheimer’s
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe there is no correlation because Lyme disease is severely underreported. A couple years ago, the CDC stated that official numbers were likely underreported by a factor of 10. From 30,000 yearly cases to 300,000 https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2013/p0819-lyme-disease.h... There was also the case of actor/songwriter Kris Kristofferson being misdiagnosed with Alzheimer's for years. He had Lyme. This is anecdotal…
The worry for me is the way this thread plays out is pretty much the textbook case for how pharmaceuticals manufacture demand for a drug. 1) Develop a drug (or find one to remarket). Find a disease that it treats or invent one. 2) Pump money into advocacy groups devoted to the disease. 3) Find research that supports the use of your drug. 4) The advocacy group spreads awareness of the disease, even if it's made up, an…
3a) If research doesn't exist, find some impecunious person with a PhD and pay them to create some.
Re: Why I’m Digging Deep Into Alzheimer’s
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you watch him question someone who was an expert in a subject that you were also an expert in?
I did, but based on my limited experience he only goes deep into questioning when he’s vetting someone or when he sees or hears something that doesn’t seem right. He’s a stickler for details. With an engineers mind for logic and reasoning. You can’t bs him because he is investing in things he is actively studying from multiple sources. You need to know the details and logic behind your approach. The people I saw stum…
The way it was explained to Joel Spolsky in the article linked earlier is that Gates just pokes away at increasingly fine details until he finds some question you can't answer, and uses that to make you look dumb. Its actually just a form of intellectual bullying, like a jock who challenges you to an arm wrestling contest before he'll let you out of the changing room.
Thats not to say that Gates isn't extremely intelligent and hardworking, just that his approach isn't necessarily the best. Also, Spolsky's anecdote is from a few decades ago. Gates will have matured a bit since then.
Re: Why I’m Digging Deep Into Alzheimer’s
#176Just relistening through some of RadioLab's podcast. I came across this apt episode about Gamma Light Therapy. Adding it to the mix. When I listen to this episode, I had a hint of hope for my dad who is suffering dementia in the past few years. http://www.radiolab.org/story/bringing-gamma-back/
It seemed like such a simple treatment, that it should be relatively easy to test more widely... But whenever I've searched, I've not seen an update.
For those who haven't listened to the podcast, the treatment is effectively just being exposed to a 40Hz (IIRC) flashing light. Which sounds surprisingly simple.
Re: Why I’m Digging Deep Into Alzheimer’s
#177Disable the shitty auto-pausing of youtube video on scroll by pasting this on the console: getEventListeners(document.getElementById('tgnbody')).scroll.forEach(function(el){document.getElementById('tgnbody').removeEventListener("scroll", el.listener)})
I didn't know there was a youtube video because (apparently) a key component of this site was blocked by Ghostery and/or uBlock.
Message to most websites that fail to load without their cruft - I just don't need you.
Re: Why I’m Digging Deep Into Alzheimer’s
#178Funny, I remember contacting the Gates foundation many years ago now about chronic illnesses and the then-new discovery of ipRGCs/pRGCs (which we will find have a critical role in Alzheimer's) and hitting a total brick wall. Paraphrasing them, "this wouldn't help the third world" - we know better now.
Nothing will help the third world more than effective vaccines for children so that living past 5 is not an anomaly. I would expect the Gates foundation to focus on that. Quality of life for old people is a nice thing, but not on the same level. As a rule when children normally live to adulthood population growth halts soon after.
Life expectancy at birth in Africa is today just under 70 years. Which means they currently lag ~50 years after the most developed countries.
There are countries that do worse, but even in the most underdeveloped, war ravaged hell-holes in the world living past 5 is not an anomaly - as of 2012 even in sub-Saharan Africa the under 5 mortality rate was down below 100 per 1000 (though still awful - compare with 6 per 1000 for the most developed countries and a world average of 48), and even the very worst - Sierra Leone - was at 234 out of a 1000. Only a handful of countries are anywhere near 200, and only 16 above 100.
I agree with your overall point about focus, but exaggerating is not useful.
Re: Why I’m Digging Deep Into Alzheimer’s
#179Funny, I remember contacting the Gates foundation many years ago now about chronic illnesses and the then-new discovery of ipRGCs/pRGCs (which we will find have a critical role in Alzheimer's) and hitting a total brick wall. Paraphrasing them, "this wouldn't help the third world" - we know better now.
The burden of aging falls most heavily on the poor, though it has to be said that the differences between rich and poor are small in comparison to the absolute degree of harm done by aging. It has been a disappointment to see the Gates Foundation near entirely bypass this area of research up to fairly recently, presumably because they do hold this strange view of aging being either a non-issue, or a problem of wealth…
The point, though, is that there is a whole lot of wealthy older people who can or do put money into research on aging related problems, exactly because it affects rich people too.
There is no danger that aging will be overlooked.
Re: Why I’m Digging Deep Into Alzheimer’s
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This conversation is going in circles. Has anyone brought up “death gives life meaning”? A platitude uttered by people who believe they have no way out, and are desperate to make themselves feel better about that. Not necessarily a bad thing, so long as there really is no way out , but catastrophic once that changes. Destroying death will lose us something, most certainly; there are any number of great works of art…
I imagine immortality will be optional. If it creeps you out, there will be other options...
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect [1] (full text available for free; be warned it's extremely violent and sexual) is an interesting novel where immortality is not optional:
An AI was "let loose" with a variation of Asimovs laws of robotics, and interpreted the requirement not to let anyone come to harm through inaction as requiring it to literally end death.
The main character is a woman that feels it left her life without meaning, and who in response started gruesome competitions involving designing the most outrageous ways to die. Or rather, getting as close to the moment of death as Prime Intellect will let them before reviving them.