For those of you that enjoyed [stderr] the podcast episode about snakes and ebola, here’s something related.
I’m not knowledgeable enough about the biochemistry and I’m only an interested amateur, but Scientific American has a piece about how apparently we farm prions in our eyeballs. [sciam] That’s my description, not theirs. Naturally, when we think there might be an unknown and badly measured reservoir of prions, we think “that might be relevant to Alzheimers'”
Since it’s the popular press I assume it’s 82% wrong, but it’s still interesting.
It was probably only a matter of time until someone connected the dots.
Prions – infectious proteins — had turned up in the eyes of victims of prion diseases.
Infected donor corneas had transmitted prion disease to recipients on at least a few occasions.
And often, patients who later turn out to be infected with prions have eye trouble for which they seek medical attention and testing before they are aware they are infected.
What if … ?
I watched Alzheimers’ take my grandmother and grandfather (both on dad’s side) and I’ve always watched my dad for any signs of unusual behavior (at his age now, “unusual” wouldn’t be) – and, from my perspective, losing my mind is a terrifying threat.
Enter the study published in November in the journal mBio by a team of American scientists that found the eyes of human prion victims are loaded with infectious particles even before they have begun to exhibit symptoms. Further, these particles are present on the surface of their corneas, the covering of the eye. 100% of the eyes of 11 sCJD victims who donated their bodies for study were seeded throughout with prions. 100% of their corneas contained prion seeding of a “low to moderate” degree. Because the cornea is enervated, the prions, which prey on proteins found in neurons, may be reaching the surface via these tiny neural conduits.
Given how much Alzheimers’ costs our civilization – in every sense of the word “cost” – it says something sad about our priorities that there are billions of dollars to spend on F-35s, and this sort of research is funded at the level where it is.
Something scary just occurred to me. What if “big pharma” read the writing on the wall and concluded that prions are implicated in Alzheimers’ and concluded there weren’t going to be any drug markets until there’s a couple revolutions in our understanding of protein synthesis? Now I’ve got reading to do.
Nature: Can you CATCH Alzheimers’?
The “I am a prion” illustration is not mine. It popped up on Google image search and I grabbed it.
Here’s a scarier thought: What if big pharma ever came to the realization that a particular disease could be fixed with a single pill taken once in your life-time and concluded that actually curing diseases would be horrible for business and turned away from sinking in the necessary funding required to develop it.
“100% of the eyes of 11 sCJD victims who donated their bodies for study were seeded throughout with prions.”
This statement is meaningless without a comparison. Consider the statement “100% of victims of a heart attack were breathing before they died.”
How many % did not have prions in their eyes?
I realise I’m responding to a blog post covering a popular press post covering a scientific article. I’m sure the relevant statistics are mentioned in the article, but it’s too late for me to go digging right now.
And… rereading my previous post… more importantly, how many % of healthy human being have prions in their eyes.
@Rfon #1
I think the market for drug therapies that cure hepatitis C with a small number of very expensive drug doses demonstrates that the scenario you described is unlikely.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323767.php
RF on says @#1
What do you think vaccinations do? They are even worse than a one pill cure, they prevent diseases, and so the sale of antibiotics, antipyretics etc etc.
And RFon @#1
This is highly unlikely. We already have medicine that prevents an illness after just a single dose, and that’s called “vaccines.” Same goes for medicine that works in ways too complex for the patient to understand what’s going on in their body after they take the pill.
I really dislike all the big pharma conspiracy theories about how they might intentionally withheld cure for whatever, just because keeping patients sick is good for their bottom line. The problem with conspiracy theories is that they are 1) highly likely to be false; and 2) they help obfuscate the truth and legitimate criticism.
There are lots of problems with the big pharma business model. There’s plenty of room for valid criticism. But no, instead of talking about real and proven problems, people choose to invent some bullshit and criticize the big pharma for things they don’t do.
What I mean with “legitimate criticism”? Pharmaceutical companies often choose to deliberately misinterpret the results of all those randomly controlled trials they are required by law to conduct. Then there’s also their advertising practices—sometimes they bribe doctors to prescribe their pills. Then there’s also the pesky issue of setting prices for medicine so high that people who live in poor countries routinely die because they cannot possibly afford the pills. And so on. There’s plenty of room for legitimate criticism.
Inventing bullshit is a really poor strategy when you want to argue about a topic where there are plenty of true and proven facts to talk about.
In case you are interested, Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients by Ben Goldacre is an interesting book which explains the actual problems with the big pharma.
Ieva you wrote just what I was thinking when I wrote my comment. If one were to get really conspiratorial one could propose that the pharma companies promoe the drug with-holding conspiracy to keep people from focusing on the real problems … ;-)
That is a terrible phrase. Prions prey on proteins in the same way oxygen preys on iron, they just react if you stick them together
@RFon
The great thing about human bodies is they are always breaking, so you can sell a fix to one problem and there will be another problem to fix in 6 months. If the human dies you can’t sell any fixes.