[ExI] Medical power of attorney for cryonicsts

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Sat, Dec 6, 2014 at 7:01 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>
>
> In that sense your two paragraphs are contradictory: I can't be sure that
> my
> recommendation will not harm this patient.  I fear that it will be harmful.
> Rafal's essay makes me think this medication will not help any more than
> removing the pus from an infection heals the infection.  If beta amyloids
> are not the cause of Alzheimer's but are the result of it, and bexarotene
> somehow causes that stuff to break down or stimulates the mechanism which
> removes it, but doesn't help the underlying condition as I am vaguely
> suspecting, then all we have accomplished is to give the patient false hope
> and suppressed his thyroid.
>

### While I strongly feel amyloid is not the cause of AD, I feel it is
possible that a causal treatment of AD is going to fix amyloid, either as a
side effect or as a part of the pathomechanism. Amyloid is a mitochondrial
suppressant, and us mito people think that it is produced in response to
derangements in mitochondria, possibly to suppress production of ROS, or
for other reasons. Mitochondrial dysfunction is in this model one of the
upstream events (itself possibly triggered by age-related accumulation of
mitochondrial DNA mutations, a well-known but not well-understood process),
and it leads to activation of mitochondrial suppressants, which make
dysfunction even worse. Bexarotene is a mitochondrial modulator through the
RXR receptor, and there is a whole bunch of other mitochondrial modulating
pathways that are prime targets for highly effective therapies (steroids,
vitamin D, TZDs, statins, biguanides - these are all mitochondrial
modulators), so I am not completely pessimistic about bexarotene. I highly
doubt it would cure AD, but it could give you a delay of a year or two, who
knows.

Removing pus from an abscess is a good thing, you know.

Rafał
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20141206/8ab220bc/attachment.html>