Recent Article ON AD As Alzheimer’s drug developers give up on today’s patients, where is the outrage? By SHARON BEGLEY @sxbegle AUGUST 15, 2018
When virologists and drug developers were too slow in finding ways to save the lives of people with HIV/AIDS and refused to give patients access to experimental drugs 30 years ago, activists chained themselves to a balcony on the New York Stock Exchange, held demonstrations where scores were arrested, and effectively shut down the Food and Drug Administration for a day.
The
lack of progress against Alzheimer’s disease has brought somewhat less outrage. Although the latest
analysis of experimental Alzheimer’s drugs finds that literally zero are being tested in late-stage clinical trials to treat moderate to severe Alzheimer’s, no patient advocacy groups uttered a peep in protest.
“We need a Larry Kramer,” said Dr. Sam Gandy, a neurologist and Alzheimer’s expert at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, referring to the AIDS activist. Instead, he said, patients and their families adopt the fatalistic attitude that dementia is an inevitable consequence of aging, and funders see spending $1 on curing a child as ethically more justified (since it buys more total years of life) than spending $1 on an 80 year old, who’s closer to the grave.
https://www.statnews.com/2018/08/15/alzheimers-patients-drug-development-outrage/