[ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

[spike]

.

> >.It is very sad that we live in a time and milieu where physicians and
pharmaceutical industry, biomedical research establishment and popular and
special press, are not to be trusted, and where the responsibility for
testing and advancing new therapies lies with individual enthusiasts. Really
sad. But is it hopeless?  Ilia

 

>.That is one way to look at it, but I have an alternate take for you.spike

 

 

This is the first case I know of where the efficacy of a medication has been
decided within a week based on the internet community.  In general we have
entered a new age.  Now if anyone posts that yakkity yak cures bla bla, then
a million bla bla sufferers will find a bottle of yakkity yak and devour it
immediately, risk be damned.  There is no waiting years for controlled
clinical trials for cures to these terrible human conditions.  Years from
now is too late; yesterday is not soon enough.  I can imagine bexarotene
will undergo clinical study, and three years from now they will announce it
doesn't do anything, but it will be irrelevant as hell, for we already know.

 

There is a bright side to all this.  The internet-enabled proletariat is a
dangerous but powerful weapon against disease: the results come back quickly
with enormous numbers of test subjects.  If anything does show up that does
work, the word spreads quickly, along with the risks, from firsthand reports
by volunteer test subjects.  Then the clinical trials can bring up the rear,
eventually telling us what we already know.  Lives will be lost, we know
that too.  But lives are lost now, waiting for cures.

 

spike

 

 

 

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