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Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?

freakonomics.com

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Re: Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?

#31

Post by dublinstats »

manquer wrote: post #20
panabee wrote: post #13

TLDR: gatekeepers stifled exploration and innovation. When a topic only has a limited number of experts, those experts become gatekeepers. Those gatekeepers directly or indirectly control research funding. Gatekeepers necessarily harbor biases, some right and some wrong, about how the field should progress. For Alzheimer's, some gatekeepers were conflicted and potentially directed the field in the wrong direction. On…

> gatekeepers directly or indirectly control research funding. Perhaps funding like public grants could be controlled by few? Should not the case for private money? Relatively common health issues older people tend to get fair amount of private funding after all. Rich people tend to be older and they are lot more likely to see amongst their friends and family Alzheimer's and Parkison's or even cancer and so forth and…

Life extension seems like the kind of thing that can get private funding with relative ease specifically because they aren't trying to compete with the government. There are a lot of private foundations that give out grants too though.

Re: Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?

#34

Post by Aurornis »

ki4jgt wrote: post #21

Type-3 diabetes? It's degraded endocrine and cardiovascular functionality. Basically, your enzymes stop producing -- things like testosterone and insulin. Your lungs stop working as efficiently, and your brain just gives out. If you're looking to beat type-3 diabetes, you need to have a daily routine of exercise while you're young to keep these systems in shape when you're old. You also don't need to belong to any ma…

Alzheimer’s is a good example of a disease where we don’t have great scientific understanding on the underlying causes, but that doesn’t stop individuals from believing they understand it better than the scientists.

Re: Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?

#35

Post by gruez »

jleyank wrote: post #30

They 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…

> Problem was, the model was wrong.

I thought despite the fraud, it's still the best model we have[1]? The fact there was fraud doesn't mean the model is immediately incorrect. At best, it means its foundations are shakier than we thought, but it's not a slam dunk repudiation.

[1] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-defense-of-the-amyloid-h...

Re: Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?

#37

Post by robwwilliams »

dublinstats wrote: post #31
manquer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> gatekeepers directly or indirectly control research funding. Perhaps funding like public grants could be controlled by few? Should not the case for private money? Relatively common health issues older people tend to get fair amount of private funding after all. Rich people tend to be older and they are lot more likely to see amongst their friends and family Alzheimer's and Parkison's or even cancer and so forth and…

Life extension seems like the kind of thing that can get private funding with relative ease specifically because they aren't trying to compete with the government. There are a lot of private foundations that give out grants too though.

Life extension in the private sector is dominated by hocus-pocus and unwarranted optimism. The genetics of mortality is amazingly complex. See this open access monster paper that came out in Nature this week—admittedly “in mice” on mortality and genetic of longevity.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10407-9

(I’m an author)

Re: Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?

#38

Post by xattt »

ki4jgt wrote: post #21

Type-3 diabetes? It's degraded endocrine and cardiovascular functionality. Basically, your enzymes stop producing -- things like testosterone and insulin. Your lungs stop working as efficiently, and your brain just gives out. If you're looking to beat type-3 diabetes, you need to have a daily routine of exercise while you're young to keep these systems in shape when you're old. You also don't need to belong to any ma…

Are recurrent childhood neglect and abuse events not an antecedent to mental health morbidity in adulthood, which then creates missed opportunities for growth and necessitates and the need for the use of medications?

I think you’re making a giant leap from A to Z and missing a whole bunch in between.

Re: Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?

#40

Post by bsder »

jleyank wrote: post #30

They 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…

The Amyloid hypothesis persisted for so long because we didn't have any obvious counterarguments since it is so hard to do studies on the brain. Which also means that it's not a bad hypothesis.

What happened is we got the tools to start studying viral associations with other diseases and ... whooops ... suddenly there are associations. The shingles and RSV vaccines seem to affect dementia while others like influenza don't.

Now people can ask questions about why those particular vaccines affect dementia while others don't. And suddenly we have falsifiable tests.

Now we can subject all hypotheses (including Amyloid) to stronger scrutiny.

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