Alzheimer's and Amyloid 4: The Long Mistake
About this episode
This episode discusses the decline of the Amyloid Hypothesis in Alzheimer's research and the controversial approval of anti-amyloid drugs despite weak evidence.
Over the first three parts in this series we followed the rise and fall of the Amyloid Hypothesis. The plaques failed. The idea of toxic precursors failed. The most influential oligomer paper in the field was ultimately retracted. By any ordinary standard of scientific reasoning, this should have marked the end of amyloid as a central explanation for Alzheimer’s Disease. Instead, something remarkable happened: As the scientific case for amyloid weakened, the clinical investment in amyloid accelerated. Drug companies continued developing anti-amyloid therapies. Regulators continued evaluating them. Researchers continued measuring amyloid. Billions of dollars flowed into a treatment strategy increasingly disconnected from the evidence. The result was the modern anti-amyloid drugs. What follows is two short essays I wrote about the clinical trials that won FDA approval for two of them. In both cases drug makers quite literally designed the trials to prove that the drugs DON’T help people with Alzheimer’s, apparently with full confidence that they could spin the results to suggest the opposite. It is among the most brazen examples of FDA game theory, and snake oil sales, that I can…
More episodes of Research Translation Podcast
- Is Your Doctor A Cholesterol Bully?
- Tamiflu, and the Fatal Mistake of Doing Something
- Is Moderate Alcohol Consumption Dangerous?
- Alzheimer's and Amyloid, A Summary
- Alzheimer's and Amyloid 5: The Big Mistake
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