[ExI] New Hope for Alzheimer's Disease Vaccine

[Lee Corbin]

It's been very, very hard not replying to some of the emails
I've been reading tonight concerning the practice of medicine
and attendant woes, but finally my resistance is overcome.

Gary writes

> This article was surprisingly downbeat because the vaccine did not repair
> the preexisting damage done by the disease.
> 
> But if the vaccine was given to the population at adulthood and stopped the
> disease from forming in the first place it would prevent any damage from
> occurring...
> 
> 
> Where do I line up?  Let the human trials begin!
> 
> This is one vaccine that the FDA should definitely streamline the testing
> process for.

Isn't it too bad that we have the "one size fits all" mentality in 
western nations?  It is assumed that people are so uniform
that the "goodness" or "badness" of a drug can be determined
by "very smart people high up", and all us dumb recipients can
be told by them what is and what is not in our own best interest.

Ignore the fact that some people are more desperate than others.
Ignore the fact that some people suffer more psychologically
   than others in waiting rooms (e.g. how much would Gina and
   her husband have been willing to pay for someone who might
   have known something to have saved them that particular
   ordeal that night?)
Ignore the fact that some people are more willing to take risks
   than other people.
And most of all, ignore the fact that people's value systems  are
   not all identical.

That is what is happening. And there is only one system that 
anyone has ever heard of that can attempt to deal with this
kind of complexity. (It happens, not coincidentally, to be a
derivative of "freedom", "freedom" in the sense of being able
to take action without some bureaucrat or other superior
interfering.)  But dare I mention the mechanism by which
desires could be translated in infinite variety into preferences?

No, I dare not, lest we have another unending thread concerning
the superiority of government run solutions.

Lee

> Maybe not for the general population but at least for people
> at the age group where serious plaque buildup begins and who are genetically
> at high risk due to a family history of the disease.  I think anyone who has
> gone through watching a parent or grandparent deteriorate and die from this
> disease should be allowed to take the risk on the vaccine to protect
> themselves!
> 
> 
> http://today.uci.edu/news/release_detail.asp?key=1755