[ExI] good bexarotene article

[spike]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Amara D.
Angelica

Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article

>>There should be a database somewhere, where people can dump medical
information, while stripping out identities, so that we can find this kind
of signal in the noise...  spike

  
>...Try:  http://curetogether.com/alzheimers-disease/treatments/

>...Amara Angelica

Thanks Amara, I joined.  It looks to me like CureTogether is the right idea,
but they are far from critical mass on the Alzheimer's part of it.  There is
a signal here which would require a lot of people working together in order
to find it.  For instance, suppose about 1 in 40 people of average age 75
use some bexarotene-containing medication for skin cancer.  Now suppose a
memory-care facility has 80 patients, none of which use any bexarotene
medications.  No signal there, nothing anywhere near statistical
significance.

Now imagine that someone can survey 100 different memory care facilities all
over the place, and discovers that of the 8000 patients of average age 75 in
those facilities, only 1 in 200 uses bexarotene medications.  That would be
a two sigma signal, well into the statistical significance range, but it
couldn't be found unless there is some mechanism for compiling the survey of
100 memory care facilities.

I have been studying up on this, and my intuition was right: there is in
fact a complete field of study dedicated to finding this kind of signal, and
they are on this bigtime.  I am following it, and will post as there are
interesting things to report.

spike