[HN Gopher] How the Alzheimer's Research Scandal Set Back Treatm...
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       How the Alzheimer's Research Scandal Set Back Treatment 16 Years
       (2022)
        
       Author : walterbell
       Score  : 37 points
       Date   : 2025-06-13 21:53 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.discovermagazine.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.discovermagazine.com)
        
       | abetancort wrote:
       | Old and outdated.
        
       | djoldman wrote:
       | Derek Lowe's take:
       | 
       | https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/reaction-alzheimer...
        
         | wileydragonfly wrote:
         | Which is the only good take... if there wasn't "something
         | promising" with the idea, people wouldn't have kept at it.
         | There's only so much time you're going to waste on pure fantasy
         | before you move on. The whole ordeal had me quite upset as I
         | was supporting studies looking at this, and the patients are
         | beyond desperate for any treatment. None of us got rich.
        
         | throwawaymaths wrote:
         | he was not in the trenches in 2003. in 2003 we were working in
         | an Alzheimer's lab and everyone in our lab at least was
         | expressing suspicion that there was something wrong with the
         | hypothesis. pretty much every internal lab meeting started with
         | "the amyloid hypothesis is... [this statement exists because
         | our funding stream] though it is not conclusively proven, wink
         | wink"
        
       | PaulKeeble wrote:
       | Its not the only disease this has happened to either. ME/CFS has
       | been railroaded by European governments that funded only
       | psychological research despite numerous pathological findings and
       | better theories of the disease, this prejudiced treatment started
       | in the 1970s and persists to this day including the corruption of
       | the PACE trial results which researchers tried to hide the data
       | of.
       | 
       | Research fraud in medicine is alarmingly common.
        
         | Henchman21 wrote:
         | There's money to be made; don't let facts stand in the way of
         | profits!
        
           | Centigonal wrote:
           | This argument gets invoked a lot when it comes to medical
           | dishonesty, but I really don't think it applies in the case
           | of ME/CFS. If we could find the pathology behind the
           | condition, there is huge money to be made in pharmaceutical
           | treatments. Just look at the enormous amount of money being
           | made treating auto-immune illnesses with
           | Humira/Skyrizi/Xeljanz/etc, treating diabetes with GLP-1
           | agonists and CGMs, and treating obesity with GLP-1 agonists
           | (and depression before all that!). Sometimes treating the
           | chronically ill is the most profitable option.
        
       | fnordpiglet wrote:
       | This is from 2022
        
       | seltzered_ wrote:
       | Related articles:
       | 
       | - The great brain clearance and dementia debate -
       | https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00962-y (2025)
       | 
       | - The Devastating Legacy of Lies in Alzheimer's Science -
       | https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/opinion/alzheimers-fraud-...
       | (2025), referencing the book Doctored
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctored_(book)
       | 
       | - The maddening saga of how an Alzheimer's 'cabal' thwarted
       | progress toward a cure for decades -
       | https://www.statnews.com/2019/06/25/alzheimers-cabal-thwarte...
       | (2019, by the late Sharon Begley)
        
       | robwwilliams wrote:
       | Great and highly critical book on this general topic: "How Not to
       | Study a Disease" by Karl Herrup from MIT Press:
       | 
       | https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/5216/How-Not-to-Study-a-Di...
       | 
       | The core problem is much older than stated in this focused
       | review.
        
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       (page generated 2025-06-13 23:00 UTC)