Cuba is making progress in this space. Good thing the US has been doing everything in its power to destroy the country https://www.bellyofthebeastcuba.com/us-citizens-in-cuba-for-...
It's actually a major source of medical tourism towards Cuba
Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?
281–290 of 355 posts
Re: Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?
#282They had a biological model. They had multiple drugs that were showed activity against that model, and effectiveness in humans. Problem was, the model was wrong. Pharma’s burned billions chasing this as it’s possibly the biggest market imaginable. Whether it was fraudulent or just incorrect is a different question. We don’t know all of the details of human biology. We don’t even know what all we don’t know. Most gues…
> Edit: Google the in the pipeline blog. This and other have discussed this at length. Derek Lowe's blog is excellent, with 192 posts tagged "Alzheimer's Disease": https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/alzheimers-disea... And, on a more entertaining topic: https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-wo...
I miss Derek Lowe's "Thing I Won't Work With" series. I know there have always been large gaps between those posts, but it's been seven years since the last one so I guess they might be over. An excerpt from a favourite of mine:
"But I have to admit, I'd never thought much about the next analog of hydrogen peroxide. Instead of having two oxygens in there, why not three: HOOOH? Indeed, why not? This is a general principle that can be extended to many other similar situations. Instead of being locked in a self-storage unit with two rabid wolverines, why not three? Instead of having two liters of pyridine poured down your trousers, why not three? And so on - it's a liberating thought. It's true that adding more oxygen-oxygen bonds to a compound will eventually liberate the tiles from your floor and your windows from their frames, but that comes with the territory."
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...
Re: Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Complications due to unaddressed microbial infection” will read as pretty confident, too, but it’s still pretty vague once you’ve really dug in.
That's why I was emphasizing "one way" and "can begin". Clearly viral infection may be a distal factor but it is not the proximate cause of Alzheimer's... which is quite conclusively due to protein aggregates.
I don’t find any of it conclusive.
Protein aggregates seem like the effect, with many causes.
Re: Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty clearly not. It would seem that beta amyloids correlate with Alzheimer's, but do not cause it. The problem us "consensus science". You could get funding to research beta amyloids, but not to research any competing hypotheses. It's much like climate science today: any dissent at all, even just questioning the predictions of catastrophe, immediately brands you as a heretic.
> It's much like climate science today: any dissent at all, even just questioning the predictions of catastrophe, immediately brands you as a heretic. I'm not sure I understand this. We've added hundreds of gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere. There's no mystery here, it's basic physics and chemistry that this will change things, and it's accepted that we don't know exactly _how_ things will change. The alternative:…
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Re: Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just say your point instead of dancing around it.
What exactly do I need to say further? My first comment was that "scientists today still don't understand correlation =/= causation" and the replies are all scientists who try to explain again how correlation can still mean causation (no it doesn't, and it definitely doesn't in this case and that has been the root cause from the beginning). So I tried to implore you to go review your text yourself, but you are clearl…
Research on the human body start with an observation, for the good reason that the omniscent orb has not invented yet, and what is causation and what is correlation is yet to be determined. Then, sometimes after years of research, it can be determined if what was observed was causation or correlation. That's why study that don't bring to a new discovery are extremely valuable nevertheless, as they show a path that was just a false lead and allow other researches to seek for something else
Re: Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?
#286Its done substantially better than more common diseases like ME/CFS which very few have even heard of let alone know the symptoms of and receives almost no funding at all. Alzheimer's received a further $100 million of NIH funding earlier this year ( https://www.alz.org/news/2026/100-million-dollar-alzheimers-... ). That is 6 times the total funding for ME/CFS federally which is currently just 15 million and planned…
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I appreciate your interest in this topic, but respectfully, many of your points are incorrect.
ME/CFS is real. [1][2][3] Alzheimer's is terrifying, but I don't believe it is fair to say that it is obviously more terrifying than ME/CFS. People with ME/CFS have an abysmal quality of life. [4][5] And finally, ME/CFS is significantly underfunded by an orders of magnitude across all metrics, even when you account for the some of the concerns you raised such as dollars per patient, dollars per year lived with disability, etc. [6][7]
For those who haven't heard of ME/CFS, let me give you a high level summary.
We are all fatigued in this day and age, but fatigue isn't sufficient to describe what it is like living with ME/CFS.
At mild severity you are so fatigued that you have to decide between showering or doing laundry as your one physical activity for the week. But if misjudge and overexert yourself, it can take days or weeks before you get some of your energy back, assuming it ever does. Overexertion risks permanently decreasing your energy capacity.
As ME/CFS progresses in severity, the more comparable your life becomes (subjectively) comparable to someone with Locked-in syndrome. You become unable to talk and walk. Even looking at colors and hearing loud noises can be too much exertion, leading many people to wear earplugs and blindfolds for all hours of the day for months/years at a time. You have no choice to lay unmoving in bed all hours of the day with nothing but your limited thought capacity to keep you company. ME/CFS is currently incurable and virtually untreatable, but usually isn't fatal. It is possible that the disease eventually gets so severe that breathing and beating your heart is too much exertion, but that is almost unheard of. You have to live like that for rest of your life.
You are surrounded by people who don't even believe in the disease, and getting disability benefits is borderline impossible.
This disease isn't even rare - estimates are between 1-3 million people in USA alone. That's roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 300.
Studies showing CFS is a real biological illness (there are plenty more, too many to list here) [1] https://www.mdpi.com/1648-9144/60/1/83 [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6787691/ [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45107-3
Studies about MECFS quality of life: [4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11356561/ [5] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26147503/
Studies detailing how grossly underfunded CFS is [6] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32568148/ [7] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43856-026-01516-7
Re: Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I don't know why you're being downvoted, your comment is spot on.
It is understandable for being downvoted in an off-topic discussion about ME/CFS in an Alzheimer's hacker news post.
But I believe the reason he is getting downvoted is because much of it is objectively incorrect, and people who live with ME/CFS don't have energy to go in depth to give a detailed reply.
I've replied with a more in-depth post where I cite studies that debunk many of the claims. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47914956)
Re: Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just say your point instead of dancing around it.
What exactly do I need to say further? My first comment was that "scientists today still don't understand correlation =/= causation" and the replies are all scientists who try to explain again how correlation can still mean causation (no it doesn't, and it definitely doesn't in this case and that has been the root cause from the beginning). So I tried to implore you to go review your text yourself, but you are clearl…
I would turn around the same request to you. I would ask that you look at how scientific research and hypotheses are actually created and the messy nature of evidence for anything that isn't particle physics and not just repeat cliches.
Re: Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?
#289An old friend of mine was one of the people working on this. Had access to top10 supercompute time and everything. He never wanted to talk about it, and he'd talk about anything. Said it made him see red. Not long before the news broke, he killed himself.
I'm pretty adamant it was fraud. You don't have to look very hard to see how profit incentives are fucking up the health/medical sector. Check out how often $1000+/dose drug goes generic and within +/- 3 months a study is published that reveals it can be strongly linked to any number of issues that would have caused it to never get approved in the first place. Then you look at the original studies and see they specifically excluded anyone that those problems would have shown up in!
Re: Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Edit: Google the in the pipeline blog. This and other have discussed this at length. Derek Lowe's blog is excellent, with 192 posts tagged "Alzheimer's Disease": https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/alzheimers-disea... And, on a more entertaining topic: https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-wo...
I miss Derek Lowe's "Thing I Won't Work With" series. I know there have always been large gaps between those posts, but it's been seven years since the last one so I guess they might be over. An excerpt from a favourite of mine: "But I have to admit, I'd never thought much about the next analog of hydrogen peroxide. Instead of having two oxygens in there, why not three: HOOOH? Indeed, why not? This is a general princ…
Yeah; they had a wonderful earthiness to their language; both highly technical and highly vivid. Like this comment on hexanitroisowurtzitane:
> Recall that this is the compound whose cocrystal with TNT is actually less dangerous than the pure starting material itself, and yeah, I know that sounds like the guy at the pet store packing a starved Komodo dragon into the carrier with your new dog, just to calm him down some.
I'm guessing he just ran out of nasty chemicals. Either that, or he got tired of it and followed his muse elsewhere.