As I age… dementia is one of the things I truly fear. So I’ve probably spent too much time pondering the topic for someone not engaged in either the research or

As I age… dementia is one of the things I truly fear. So I’ve probably spent too much time pondering the topic for someone not engaged in either the research or practice of medicine. But from this armchair perspective it feels a lot like the challenge is how slow the progress of Alzheimers can be. It’s not having an infection where the clinical trial is, at it’s core, as simple as “you take the pill we see you get better” and so you can run a trial and a few months later you’ve got results that are some degree of obvious. But with Alzheimers if it’s a preventative treatment it’s going to take years before the results are sufficiently discernible, if it’s a treatment for after you have symptoms it’s just as bad because it’s going to take just about as many years to be sure it’s not getting any worse and if it works quickly then it could still take years to be sure it was a success since recovering from brain injury and damage can be a long slow process and depending on the degree of Alzheimers induced impairment your going to either be sifting through subjective self reporting and psychological assessments trying to work out what’s Alzheimers, what’s normal age related cognitive decline, and what someone getting better from one but still affected by the other should be experiencing… It’s got to be maddening for people who are trying to research treatments for Alzheimers. All I can do from this armchair is wish them the best of luck and make some occasional charity donations.