You may have seen the news recently about two new FDA-proofed blood tests that may detect

Alzheimer's disease in the early stages. Early detection is important for any disease, but especially

for Alzheimer's, which can take root for 20 years before symptoms develop. These symptoms, as you

probably know, include memory loss and other cognitive, physiological,

and behavioral issues.

The reason I say that you probably know these symptoms is because Alzheimer's affects more

than 7 million people in the U.S., most of them over 65.

Age-related memory loss has been seen throughout human history, but the disease was not formally

documented until 1906 by the German physician Alois Alzheimer.

When Alzheimer autopsied the brain of a woman who had had memory loss and hallucinations,

he found that her brain had shrunk and withered with

numerous tangles and what he called peculiar deposits. Scientists have been trying to figure out

those deposits and tangles ever since. The National Institutes of Health spends around $4 billion

a year on Alzheimer's and dementia research that's up from around $1 billion a decade ago,

and that puts it second only to cancer spending, which makes sense because the elderly population

in the U.S. is big and getting bigger. Much of this Alzheimer's research is centered around

one dominant theory of the disease.

But what if that theory is flawed?

No one's getting better with these drugs.

Every scientist who works with them, every clinician, will say the same.

If they don't, they're lying.

So is flawed even the right word, or should it be fraud?

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