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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?

#311

Post by ch4s3 »

culi wrote: post #281
financetechbro wrote: post #221

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

No it isn't. There's little evidence this drug works beyond some small studies done in Cuba by the people who developed the drug. The sum total of medical tourism to Cuba is quite small, no more than about 10k people per year. This is large due to their healthcare system lacking basic supplies like gauze and aspirin. Belly of the Beast isn't a real news outlet, its propaganda.

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

#312

Post by culi »

ch4s3 wrote: post #311
culi wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually a major source of medical tourism towards Cuba

No it isn't. There's little evidence this drug works beyond some small studies done in Cuba by the people who developed the drug. The sum total of medical tourism to Cuba is quite small, no more than about 10k people per year. This is large due to their healthcare system lacking basic supplies like gauze and aspirin. Belly of the Beast isn't a real news outlet, its propaganda.

What is "a lot" of tourism is arbitrary but Cuba is obviously one of the most commonly talked about medical tourist destinations. Despite being strangled by the longest running US embargo (66 years) they managed to make a remarkable and free healthcare system. According to the World Bank and WHO they have the most doctors per capita of any country. Anyone that's worked in international crises is well aware of Cuba's army of doctors that they send to help out in disasters

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

#313

Post by bsder »

bglazer wrote: post #309
ramraj07 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were no cointerarguments? There was a very simple counterargument: where was the causal data? If none exist why should I counter argue when you hadn't proven it to begin with.

Ah causal data! It’s a shame none of the scientists or statisticians thought of getting causal data. How would we get that? Well maybe we could just inject amyloid into a person’s brain. Or simply remove all the amyloid from a person’s brain. That should do it, right? I mean an amyloid injection is wildly unethical and it’s also not the natural progression of Alzheimer’s. Removing amyloid is a simple matter of invest…

> Well maybe we could just inject amyloid into a person’s brain.

Erm, we kinda did? People who got cadaver-derived human growth hormone from Alzheimer's patients got Alzheimer's.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02729-2

And we just had an actual autopsy confirm a case: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/new-evidence-strengthen...

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

#315

Post by collingreen »

rob_c wrote: post #263
raverbashing wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are also money issues like with the alzheimer's situation. (that is: If climate change is dooming us then we should send more money to climate scientists) Absolutely, the issues are similar And if this can upend the business model of some big companies we'll give some "incentives" to some "doubtful" scientists even if their doubts are unfounded (actually very well founded but you get the gist) Which sucks bec…

> we should send more money to climate scientists. Couldn't disagree more. Please spend it on those who might actually fix something. There's plenty of can remove carbon or can undo the effect of X on Y. Let's stop falling back on the bad argument of we must leave nature alone right after arguing we change billion dollar industries because we can. We shouldn't learn to be custodians watching the planet die because of…

> we should be fixing and improving the planet and improving on nature

How do you do this without a process of finding out what works and what doesn't? Isn't that science? Or am I misunderstanding you saying no more modeling to mean we already know everything we might need to know in order to shoulder this planet scale responsibility and just collectively aren't doing anything except making bar charts?

What does your proposal actually look like without science or climate modeling?

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

#316

Post by cookiengineer »

josh-wrale wrote: post #306
cookiengineer wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Non-sequitur Not sure what you are trying to achieve with comments like this, besides intentional gas lighting. Could've commented with links to scientific articles or papers that disprove my theory. Instead you chose to be ... this?

https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2025/09/rethinking-al...

You do realize that they are referring to the same study and dataset, which showed that shingles is correlated to APOE4, right?

Not sure if you are trolling at this point.

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

#317

Post by josh-wrale »

cookiengineer wrote: post #316
josh-wrale wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2025/09/rethinking-al...

You do realize that they are referring to the same study and dataset, which showed that shingles is correlated to APOE4, right? Not sure if you are trolling at this point.

I am not a researcher in this field. I have read a lot about APOE4, and nearly everything I have seen about APOE4 makes it out to be the clearest of all predictors for Alzheimer's. I get that you're upset that I posted like I did, but I am not trolling. The point was that genetic causes are not an exceptional predictor for Alzheimer's. I had a hard time seeing how the best established predictor for Alzheimer's validates there being too many things labeled as Alzheimer's. If I had posted with a focus on some edge case, then it probably would have made more sense to me, but as I read it, it really seemed like a stretch.

Dropping this thread now. I am fine with being wrong, but my brief posting was not trolling.

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

#318

Post by [deleted] »

IanGallacher wrote: post #286
avazhi wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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…

[deleted]

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

#319

Post by CodeWriter23 »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #239
rcxdude wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and they don't have any uncurious attack dogs willing to defend their narrative-busting results. Well, they seem to have some champions here...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Get curious

This guy brings the receipts https://x.com/markkaplan20/status/2048350831096090749?s=61&t...

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

#320

Post by pcrh »

pfisherman wrote: post #299
pcrh wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of systematic reviews is to be un-biased. So if their question is whether targeting Aβ amyloid is a valid approach they have to include the unsuccessful trails as well as those purported to be successful. As to the trials specifically for Lecanemab and Donanemab, the benefits are not claimed to be either strong or large, even by those who support it. The current support these receive is more aligned with th…

I don’t quite follow the reasoning behind this being “unbiased”. Studies must be designed to answer specific research question. What is the question being asked by the study in question. If the question being asked is whether AB the right target (in humans), then it would need to consider other forms of human evidence, such as genetic evidence, alongside alternative explanations of failure — bad molecule, wrong isofo…

The question asked in the Cochrane review linked to above is whether there is evidence that current treatments targeting amyloid provide relief. Their conclusion is that the effect is too small to be considered beneficial. Especially when considering the undoubted side-effects, which include edema and micro-bleeding in the brain.

It doesn't ask whether amyloid is causative of the disease.

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