
Sergey Brin's Search for a Parkinson's Cure (2010) - valhalla
http://www.wired.com/2010/06/ff_sergeys_search/
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cryoshon
Science can devise solutions to problems like Parkinson's, eventually. The
article discusses a few items in the current search-- a good start.

If you want better results than an amorphous "someday", you're not gonna get
it with our society's current level of engagement with science. Science isn't
lucrative, and the public doesn't care about anything other than the usually
overstated "breakthrough" headlines.

You want diseases to be cured? Make science a priority rather than something
extraneous. Get the children and the public excited about science again, then
try to steal smart and qualified people from other disciplines with
outstanding benefits and hard problems. Make sure there's enough patience and
funding (in that order!) to really delve into things.

~~~
mhkool
The work of Dr Bredesen deserves more than some negative rumbling. Dr Bredesen
comes with a treatment that has a solid basis: do everything possible that is
anti-inflammatory. And he reversed (that is the technical term for 'cured')
severe memory loss and the patients that were unable to work, were able again
to work after a few months of treatment. That is most certainly a breakthrough
since before the work of Dr Bredesen there were only medicines that could slow
down the disease.

~~~
cryoshon
As a scientist I'm interested in his results, but highly skeptical. Let's see
someone else replicate them.

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13hours
Genetically I have a 50% chance of getting Parkinsons. My father was diagnosed
earlier this year, and 2 of his 4 siblings already have it. There's a medical
study being done on our family to try and identify the gene responsible, but
we already know my cousins and I have a 50% chance. I'm not sure I'd even want
to know whether it's 100% if they were able to do the tests. Not until there's
a possible cure for it. Knowing won't change anything if I can't do anything
about it. I guess I'm still in denial, trying to just ignore it away for now.

I just hope there's a cure by the time my children (6 and 3 now) get to my
age, otherwise I'll advise them to think hard about having children and
passing on the gene.

~~~
iooi
Please don't take this the wrong way, I'm in a similar situation, did you have
kids hoping that there would be a cure by now? Or were you not aware of the
50% chance when you had them?

~~~
melling
The average age for Parkinson symptoms is 60 years old. In the year 2070 I
would hope we will have an effective treatment.

~~~
Laaw
Also, 60 years of life is well worth it.

~~~
melling
You can easily live 10 or 20 years after you get it. I think Michael J Fox and
Andy Grove have had it for almost 20 years.

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mhkool
To Sergey Brin and all others that fear for Parkinson: only if you forget what
others told you and look at the work of Dr Dale Bredesen, you can open your
eyes for new ways to cure brain diseases.

In a recent presentation,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzCXyjy3BRo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzCXyjy3BRo)
Dr Perlmutter and Dr Bredesen talk about a real cure for Alzheimer and hint
that they think that they can do the same for Parkinson.

More info at
[http://www.impactaging.com/papers/v6/n9/full/100690.html](http://www.impactaging.com/papers/v6/n9/full/100690.html)
(9 out of 10 patients cured!) and
[http://www.drperlmutter.com/learn/studies/](http://www.drperlmutter.com/learn/studies/)

~~~
RankingMember
"Nine of the 10 displayed subjective or objective improvement in cognition
beginning within 3-6 months, with the one failure being a patient with very
late stage AD."

The way this sentence (from the abstract) hedges by including "subjective OR
objective" hardly makes this sound like a "real cure". As the summary notes,
"These anecdotal results suggest the need for a controlled clinical trial of
the therapeutic program."

~~~
mhkool
Notwithstanding the cautious phrasing of the author, 9 of 10 patients had such
huge improvements, from not being able to work and forgetting everything, to
the opposite, that I take the liberty of calling that a 'cure'.

~~~
RankingMember
A sample size of 10 is hardly something to base any meaningful conclusions on.

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dimitri_chas
Great article, in my opinion it sums up the immense possibilities of data
usage in modern research. Coming from a health science background I quite
often get frustrated from how long it takes for a scientific paper to go from
hypothesis to publication. I believe that the use of our immense computational
power to process through large amounts of data will continue changing the
traditional approach to research. Once we figure out how to reliably tackle
the inevitable bias of these data sets traditional data collection will become
a topic in statistics history.

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m52go
Thank you for posting this. I don't have any personal connection to Sergey.
But I'd be damn heartbroken to see such a titan of our time be captured by
this miserable, disgusting disease.

~~~
melling
Andy Grove and Michael J Fox suffer from Parkinson's. I've donated here
before:

[https://www.michaeljfox.org](https://www.michaeljfox.org)

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narrator
Methylene blue had some good research behind it. It's not the high tech
cutting edge billion dollar drug made possible by big data and artificial
intlligence that everyone is dreaming of, so it will probably be ignored no
matter how much academic research piles up on it.

It also has the intolerable side effect of making one's pee blue.

~~~
e40
_It also has the intolerable side effect of making one 's pee blue._

Doesn't seem that intolerable to me, as far as negatives go.

