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

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins
Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

On 02/28/2012 11:47 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote:
> 2012/2/27 spike<spike66 at att.net>:
>> Thanks Tom!  That is exactly what I suspected.  Our litigious society 
>> goes to heck and gone chasing tiny risks, when huge risks result from
inaction.
>> I propose a class of medications in which we apply the shocking 
>> caveat that the patient accepts her own risk...

>...Are you saying that an adult needs your permission to put something in
their own body?  Really? - samantha


Is not the entire concept absurd?

This whole bexarotene adventure caused me to really ponder something I
seldom give a second thought, for I am one of the fortunate ones, to have
reached the half century mark without having to take any medications of any
kind on a regular basis, no vitamins, no little orange plastic bottles,
nothing.  I don't think about it much, but consider the absurdity on
multiple levels.

We have constructed a monstrosity of a procedure to get a new medication
approved.  This process can cost half a billion dollars or more, and
investors are eager to make their money back (imagine that), so we have
situations like Targretin.  If bexarotene is taken in that form, the daily
dose is about 40 dollars, but reagent grade bex is under a dollar a day.
For your money, you get a dosage of bexarotene which is measured to within
about 20 parts per thousand, so you can be sure you are getting right at the
lab tested and demonstrated safe 75 milligrams, but I challenge you to fail
to notice the obvious astonishing failure of logic: humans vary in size by
at least a factor of two, even if we stay within the two sigma range.  Yet
all patients are given the same very precisely measured 75 milligrams.  You
are also assured of not devouring a fraction of a milligram of catalysts,
don't you feel better now, without all that bad old aluminum trichlor and
(gasp!) sodium hydroxide.

Even this observation fails to plumb the depths of the absurdity, for skinny
people have a larger proportion of their body mass in bone, which does not
interact much with medications.  If I compare my bony ass self with normal
people, my non-bone mass is perhaps a factor of three below that of my own
good friend and colleague who is easily two of me, three if we look at just
non-bone mass.  Yet we both get the same VERY PRECISELY measured dosage.

Samantha, your post points toward the fact that our wonderfully safe system
is protecting us to death.  Many people cannot come up with an extra 1200 a
month, especially those suffering from the financially debilitating malady
of Alzheimer's.  So if one is squirmy about medications anyway (as I am) and
never eats medications off-label, our medical system keeps a possibly
life-saving medication away from the patient.  But if the stoner community
comes galloping to our aid, and eats this stuff in reagent form dissolved in
alcohol, they being generally more comfortable with this sort of thing, then
they will have performed a wonderful service for humankind, for reagent
grade bexarotene is within the reach of even the poor among us.  If it works
out that way, I may be forced to stop making snarky comments about the
stoner community.  They will no longer be dopers, but rather the volunteer
medical test community which enjoys a good time through advanced chemistry.

All that being said, I recommend you not go out and devour bex before you
talk to your doctor, for there are known side effects which can likely be
compensated, specifically hypothyroidism.  There are others, but I can
imagine there are plenty of doctors around who will so welcome that data
that they will do what they can for you.

According to the word on the street, it will take 8 to 10 years for proper
clinical trials, if they are done at all (no guarantee, for the patent will
expire soon.)  But there will be plenty of reliable-ish data coming in the
next few months from the afore mentioned recreational chemists.

Encouraging parting shot: the Salk Institute has been experimenting with an
AD medication, which they do not identify chemically, but which they offer a
screen shot in the following video at about 1 minute 40 seconds.  It is
chemically very similar to bexarotene, with the differences being slight
relocation of the methyl groups and chlorine substitution of three
hydrogens.  Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xz_0zujJjD0

Is this a great time to be alive or what?

spike