Tag: Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer's Disease

No evidence, no problem: A closer look at the aducanumab approval

Why did the FDA approve aducanumab, a drug that hasn't been shown to work?

/ June 10, 2021
Prions and Creutzfeldt‐Jakob disease

Can mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines cause prion disease or Alzheimer’s?

Antivax immunologist J. Bart Classen published a paper claiming that mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines can cause prion disease leading to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's dementia. What are prions, and can these vaccines cause prion disease? (Spoiler alert: The answer to the second question is almost certainly no. It's speculation based on highly implausible biology.)

/ February 22, 2021
One Million Dollars

Would you pay $1 million to enroll in a phase 1 clinical trial of an “anti-aging” gene therapy?

Libella Gene Therapeutics, LLC made the news last week for announcing a "pay-to-play" trial of its telomerase-based anti-aging gene therapy. What was shocking about the announcement was not that it was a "pay-to-play" trial, given that such trials have become all too common, but rather the price of enrollment: $1 million. Worse, the trial is being conducted in Colombia; the therapy doesn't...

/ December 2, 2019

Mosconi’s Brain Food Diet

Mosconi offers a plan to prevent and treat Alzheimer's and maximize cognitive function in everyone. She claims brain health requires a unique diet, but she fails to make her case. Some of what she says is good standard health advice, but the rest is speculative, not based on good scientific evidence, and sometimes demonstrably wrong.

/ May 29, 2018

Corrigendum. The Week in Review. 03/26/2017

Death from naturopathy. Cows and soldiers have a similar problem. Pseudo-medicines never die. Chiropractic complications. And more.

/ March 26, 2017

MEND Protocol For Alzheimer’s Disease

The medical profession is currently engaged in a simmering debate about what is the best overall approach to take toward the relationship between science and health care. I would say that the current dominant model is Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM). We, of course, advocate for a number of tweaks to EBM we call Science-Based Medicine (SBM). SBM essentially advocates for an ironic-sounding holistic...

/ June 22, 2016

Aging and Longevity: Science for Spring Chickens

We’re all going to die, but we don’t like to think about it. I’ll reach the proverbial threescore years and ten next month, so I’ve been thinking more about it, wishing I knew some reliable way to ensure that I would live many more years and remain fully functional until I suddenly collapsed like the Deacon’s wonderful one-hoss shay. There are myriad...

/ June 16, 2015

Another Lawsuit To Suppress Legitimate Criticism – This Time SBM

I suppose it was inevitable. In fact, I’m a bit surprised it took this long. SGU Productions, the Society for Science-based medicine, and I are being sued for an article that I wrote in May of 2013 on Science-Based Medicine. My SBM piece, which was inspired by an article in the LA Times, gave this summary: The story revolves around Dr. Edward...

/ July 23, 2014

Vitamin E for Alzheimer’s

Recently you may have seen headlines like “Vitamin E slows decline in patients with mild Alzheimer’s” or “There’s still no cure for Alzheimer’s disease, but the latest hope for slowing its progression is already on drugstore shelves.” They were referring to an article in the January 1, 2014 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) announcing the results of...

/ January 7, 2014

Coconut Oil

Is coconut oil a miracle food, or a health hazard? Likely neither.

/ May 28, 2013