4 ms·

One right thing to do in Alzheimer's is map the whole thing end to end, them make a decision on what to do. I think you're underestimating the difficulty of th

One right thing to do in Alzheimer's is map the whole thing end to end, them make a decision on what to do. I think you're underestimating the difficulty of that task. Not only is current technology inadequate for mapping the brain, even if we did draw the lines, we would still be far from understanding it. Even C. Elegans took over a decade to map, and while it's true that our technology is better, it is still not up to the task of mapping the brain. If we waited until the brain were mapped to make any progress would mean delaying much progress.

reasonattlm 10y ago
That's kind of the point. That is exactly what's happening in the research community, plus the inefficiency of people stepping off the mapping process as soon as they find some mechanism that might slightly slow disease progression, and then focusing on that rather than something that might clean up the damage instead of slowing it down. Not enough of the research community is doing the other thing, the repair and reversion of differences between old and young tissues carried out in advance of full understanding, so as to aim at cures rather than delay. Alzheimer's, funnily, is in a much better position than most other age-related diseases because a large chunk of the mainstream of the research effort is actually directed towards a repair-of-the-differences approach - removal of amyloid via immunotherapy in this case. That choice of strategy isn't true for heart disease, diabetes, dementia, etc, etc. If we want to see cures for age-related disease, there must be a sweeping change in the research community's high level strategy, towards repair of fundamental damage that distinguishes old tissues from young tissues, and away from tinkering with the disease state to slow it down or to compensate for some of its effects.

4 ms·

One right thing to do in Alzheimer's is map the whole thing end to end, them make a decision on what to do. I think you're underestimating the difficulty of th

by ktRolster 10y ago

reasonattlm 10y ago
That's kind of the point. That is exactly what's happening in the research community, plus the inefficiency of people stepping off the mapping process as soon as they find some mechanism that might slightly slow disease progression, and then focusing on that rather than something that might clean up the damage instead of slowing it down. Not enough of the research community is doing the other thing, the repair and reversion of differences between old and young tissues carried out in advance of full understanding, so as to aim at cures rather than delay. Alzheimer's, funnily, is in a much better position than most other age-related diseases because a large chunk of the mainstream of the research effort is actually directed towards a repair-of-the-differences approach - removal of amyloid via immunotherapy in this case. That choice of strategy isn't true for heart disease, diabetes, dementia, etc, etc. If we want to see cures for age-related disease, there must be a sweeping change in the research community's high level strategy, towards repair of fundamental damage that distinguishes old tissues from young tissues, and away from tinkering with the disease state to slow it down or to compensate for some of its effects.