Slashdot Mirror
Experimental Drug Compound Found To Reverse Effects of Alzheimer's In Mice
Zothecula (1870348) writes "While there has been progress made in the fight against Alzheimer's, our understanding of the dispiriting disease remains somewhat limited, with a definitive cure yet to be found. The latest development comes at the hands of researchers from Yale's School of Medicine, who have discovered a new drug compound shown to reverse the effects of Alzheimer's in mice."
All we need now is a drug to turn humans into mice.
If I read that correctly (yeah, I RTFA) what that stuff does is facilitate the transfer of short term into long term memory.
Forget Alzheimer (please, no lame puns here), every student on this planet will want that stuff. I sure know I would've killed to get that shit to stuff all that nonsensical crap into my brain that I had to learn for a few tests that were about as interesting as watching the carpet warp during hot Summers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Do mice get Alzheimer's disease in the wild? This is blatantly fraudulent 'research'.
Cars don't appear in the wild either, yet research has enabled them anyways. That is to say, I do not think you even understand what the word "fraudulent" means.
With so many advancements and near miraculous treatments being discovered almost daily it's never been a better time to be a mouse!
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Unless your proposal involves turning the old people into soylent grey, there definitely is. It's a particularly slow and very, very, unpleasant way to die(not so much because of any gruesome physical symptoms as because gradual and relentless loss of assorted important congnitive functions is both terrifying and increasingly incomprehensible as you lose more of them) and makes the victim substantially dependent on caregivers some years before they otherwise might be. Very hard on the patient, very hard on their relatives, and quite expensive, often for a number of years.
No, mice don't get alzheimer's disease in the wild. They don't live long enough to. A domesticated mouse can sometimes develop dementia entirely on its own as it ages, however. Any mouse, or any creature for that matter, which happened to live long enough in the wild to develop such conditions would not survive for long without human intervention.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It's only old people who get Alzheimer's. No loss there...
Unless of course you're so unfortunate to have early-onset. In which case it can start at the age of 15.
Om, nomnomnom...
How about this?
Simply put, such dementia would leave the animal without essential survival skills, and unless they are being cared for by people, they would die. Rabies causes irrational behavior, but does not deprive the animal of the ability of the cognitive skills necessary for survival. Certain other forms of dementia, such as Alzheimer's, which is also what this slashdot story is about, does.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'