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Comment by timy2shoes | Hacker News Reader

I think the overall goal assumes that genetics causes Alzheimer's, which is (in my opinion) a questionable assumption. That's not to say that the production of model systems for Alzheimer's will be useful, but will it be worth the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars that this will cost? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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As long as it's not diverting funds from anything more promising then spend all the money you want I say. Try everything. You may fail more often but you'll find the right answer faster.

With a limited NIH budget this will necessarily divert funds from other endeavors. In addition, I think such programs entrench the large lab bias prevalent in academia right now.

The book "The End of Alzheimers" makes a case that there are 36 causes of Alzheimers. It's the combination of those causes that results in the disease. The more of those causes a person has, the more likely they'll develop Alzheimers.

This is why research and treatments that focus on only one cause have all been stymied and went nowhere.

The book's treatment program is to address as many of the causes as possible.

Gene therapy can treat diseases that aren't specifically caused by genetics.

Yes, but that would require knowing how to rescue the phenotype, in this case healthy neurons and connections. Alzheimer's is not like Parkinson's, which you can (most likely, see the recent work from BlueRock) treat by replacing dopaminergic neurons or rescuing the dopamine production.

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