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History provides perspective, probably because we keep repeating it. Several hundred years ago, smallpox was the scourge of Europe. Treatment, such as it was, consisted of compassion, fluids, and a gamut of various herbs, bark, roots, and fungal preparations, none of which changed the mortality. The diligent healer of the late middle ages tried hard […]

An odd thing came across my desk yesterday: a reminder that some people, without meaning to, encourage not only a sense of futility and gloom, but in their dark view of the world, they end up encouraging disease, including Alzheimer’s. In the middle ages, it was common to attribute disease and suffering to god’s will […]

The rate-limiting-step to innovation is assumption. Often, we have the infrastructure, the knowledge, and even the intelligence we need to move ahead, but stumble and fall over our own assumptions. Why didn’t Europe use immunizations hundreds of years earlier than it did? Why didn’t we discover – and make use of – the steam engine […]

The other day I was asked about the role of denaturation of a particular protein in aging. It was a typical question that pretty much sums up the problem we have had in understanding (and doing anything about) aging during the past century. The problem is the question hides a flawed premise. It presupposes that […]

I hope that all of you will take a look at the free chapter of my new book, The Telomerase Revolution, that has just been posted on Singularity. If you find the chapter provocative, please buy the book and read it carefully. The question of “Why we age” (the title of the chapter excerpted here) […]

We’re going to take an odd detour into both chaos theory and traffic flow in order to understand Alzheimer’s disease, so fasten your seatbelt. The key cascade of pathology that we’re going to look at (and explain) is the presence of beta amyloid plaques in patients with Alzheimer’s, but the principle applies equally to tau […]

The other day, a friend of mine, Liz Parrish, the CEO and founder of BioViva, made quite a splash when she injected herself with a viral vector containing genes for both telomerase and FST. Those in favor of what Liz did applaud her for her courage and her ability to move quickly and effectively in […]

Our new biotechnology company, Telocyte, is moving along, as can be seen in our website. Our mission is simple: we intend to cure Alzheimer’s disease. We have no intention of “ameliorating”, “slowing”, or “improving the care for” Alzheimer’s disease. Instead, our goal is to prevent and cure it entirely. No one should ever have to […]

On Tuesday October 6th, four weeks from today, The Telomerase Revolution will be released by its publisher, BenBella Books. The Telomerase Revolution is a lucid and complete account of what’s been going on in the field, from its beginning to the current revolution in our ability to treat age-related diseases directly and effectively. As many […]

Most of us are more concerned with whether we can cure Alzheimer’s at all, than we are with the cost of curing it. You can imagine someone saying that dementia is so horrible that “it doesn’t matter what it costs” to treat or cure it. Except that it really does matter. Whether it were a […]

Most of us have wondered about what causes Alzheimer’s. As commonly happens, we stumble badly when we make assumptions, even in asking questions, let alone in trying to answer those questions. The question “what causes Alzheimer’s?” presupposes that there is a single such disease (Alzheimer’s) and that we can define it well enough to ask […]

We are too often satisfied with failure. Not believing we can succeed, we eschew further thinking, and we call it quits. In the case of Alzheimer’s therapy, we define statistical flukes as “hope”, declare victory, and retire into platitudes and misconception. Rather than cure disease or improve human lives, we content ourselves with pessimistic delusions […]

No. Then why do I even bring this up? Yesterday, a patient asked me if Alzheimer’s disease could be prevented (or made less likely) if you ate the “right” diet. It’s a question that strikes not to the core of the pathology, but to the depth of our fears. Historical precedents offer useful parallels and […]

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. – Variously Attributed [This blog was written and published on Monday July 20th, two days prior to the announcement of the results of Eli Lilly’s clinical trials of solanezumab for Alzheimer’s.] Until now, there have been only two globally-approved drugs for […]

Alzheimer’s disease steals our souls. We lose our humanity when it destroys the neurons that make up a critical part of our brains, but why those neurons die has always remained a mystery since “senility” was first noted, thousands of years ago. Even in the past century, since it was first described clinically by Dr. […]