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

[Mike Dougherty]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:40 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> Acknowledged.  Do let me restate in more diplomatic terms.  I am criticizing
> the double standard.  The stoners take whatever risky thing, society is all
> heh heh, girls just wanna have fuh-hunnnn.  But let me do likewise, and
> suddenly I am some big evil peg-leg hook-hand eye-patch and green parrot on
> my shoulder pirate trolling the high seas, aaarrrrrr ye scurvy dogs!

Unless something goes horribly wrong with your homemade meds, I'm
pretty sure you lose you leg or eye.  However, if your Chinese
supplier tells you to pick up your ingredients yourself, you WILL be
on a slow boat to (and from) China.  You would of course be on the
slow boat because it's more energy efficient.  You would likely
disembark and then continue your journey in your 50kg ape hauler.
That is unless you were moving considerably large volumes of cargo, in
which case you'd rely on the Detroit "suit-of-armor" which you'd also
drive in the slow lane.  :)

> My disdain is not for the stoners, who may soon coming galloping to our
> collective aid, but rather the whole notion of labeling amateur pharmacists
> as pirates.  I ain't buying it.  We are closer to the noble and ballsy
> Columbus than Black Beard, aaarrrr.

You forget that both challenged the status quo.  That is untenable to
those with interests to protect.

> However, this may not work: I am not an Alzheimer's patient myself and
> haven't noticed any particular unusual memory loss, other than failing to
> recall Dr. Leary's name temporarily in the above paragraph.  I was never a
> fan of his, so my taking half a minute to recall his name isn't indicative
> of anything.  So, question please Jeff and others: if we don't have memory
> loss symptoms, how can we determine if this stuff is effective?  If we know
> someone who does have it, how can we feel confident we have informed consent
> of the patient to try it on them?  What if we discover that bexarotene helps
> normal non-AD patients?  Would not the clamor for the medications overwhelm
> the supply, depriving the unsuspecting cancer patients? Oy vey.

One idea comes to mind:  how aware are you of your internal state?  If
you have some sense of a personality checksum or some means of
determining the distance you have deviated from your baseline self -
you might be able to sense changes caused by experimentation.  If you
are concerned the experiment could significantly influence/alter your
perception of baseline then I suggest you have a journal.  If you
start now and build a sample of pre-experiment internal conversation
(vs. what you converse here) you might have enough data to mine for
differences over weeks/months into your experiment.  You ARE planning
for months, right?

> How about mixing it with some legal drug?  Oh wait, already suggested that,
> alcohol, never mind.
>
> That’s IT!  We use it as a flavoring for vodka!  Call it a Targretin
> Wallbanger or an Amyloid Sundowner or something.  Good thinking Jeff.

When you mentioned off-label aspirin use my first thought was as an
additive to the water in your xmas tree.
[http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070101162824AAykLXI]  I
personally prefer to eat the stuff myself for the headache caused by
having a pine tree in the house.

The soap idea is pretty good too.  I guess it'd be difficult to make
that into a bar with the amount of alcohol you're suspending this
stuff in.  Perhaps sell it as a powder that you have to mix into
"water" much like any protein powder, but we'd all know the water you
are talking about is vodka.  For that matter you could add it to
mouthwash, which is mostly alcohol already.  Bex might as well be
added for "tooth whitening" for all the purported good of those
whitening substances already in your toothpaste.  I digress.

I don't have any chemistry or pharma skills to add to this
conversation.  I do suggest you consider the boat because you
definitely don't want to try getting any of this through an airport...