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THE New York Times frog long interview This morning between the columnist Ross Douthat and the venture capital and founder of Paypal, Peter Thiel. There is a reason why it was published in the opinion section.
Thiel, a trump amplifier of which allies – Including Vice -President JD Vance – Now the house of the White House, has been given for free to discuss a variety of subjects on more than an hour of softball issues. Is Greta Thunberg the Antichrist anteal? Are the three predominant ideological schools in Europe by the “Islamic Sharia law” and the “Chinese communist totalitarian takeover”? Is AI “awake” and capable of following Elon Musk in Mars? Peter seems to think! The journalism school “just asking questions” could perhaps add “Hey, what you’re talking about“To his repertoire.
Admittedly, many of these statements fall out squarely in the field of things that exist in the Palais de l’Esprit de Thiel rather than verifiable facts, at least a notable exception. Relatively early in their cat, Peter tells Ross what follows [emphasis ours]::
If we look at biotechnology, something like dementia, Alzheimer’s disease – We have made no progress in 40 to 50 years. People are completely stuck on beta-amyloids. It obviously does not work. It’s just a kind of stupid racket where people strengthen.
It is a fairly daring affirmation! It is also completely false.
“There was no treatment 40 or 50 years ago for Alzheimer’s disease,” said professor of geriatrics and gerontology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “What we have been able to do in the past 20 years has in fact been quite extraordinary. We have developed markers that help us identify when this disease begins, using amyloid markers and tau biomarkers, we know that the disease really starts 20 years before symptoms, and this is an essential thing to know if we are going to prevent this disease.”
For the moment, Alzheimer’s disease remains incurable. But the absence of a miracle remedy does not deny achievements so far in detection and prevention. “The first treatments were these dressing treatments. It is like treating symptoms as you treat a cold […] The first generation of amyloid therapy was this type of approach where it simply addressed symptoms by amplifying neurons and increasing the neurotransmitters available for brain cells. “Johnson, whose team manages one of the largest and longest studies On people at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, added: “We now have opportunities to really modify the biology of the disease through the amyloid path, but we are also focused on the other proteinopathy – which is acquire – And there are current clinical trials. “”
Thiel, a well -known defender of progress in the extension of radical life (including a reported The interest in injecting the blood of young people) considers the state of scientific research in this area as slow and the risk of being opposed. But the revolutionary work occurs at the moment. Professor Johnson underlined a monoclonal antibody called Gantenerumab. In an early test of 73 participants with hereditary mutations which would make them overproduce of amyloid in the brain, it reduced the number of participants who developed symptoms of Alzheimer’s practically in half. “Large trials of prevention of phase three [of gantenerumab] occurs right now. “”
For someone who consumes himself as a heterodox thinker, Thiel certainly seems to have stumbled on a subject of discussion remarkably similar to the current FDA chief of the Trump administration Robert F Kennedy Jr. “Alzheimer is a very good example of the way in which [National Institute of Health] has left the rails in the past 20 years with research on amyloid plates “Kennedy said During a budget hearing from the Ministry of Health last month. He said the NIH “cut any other hypothesis” due to “corruption”.
Unsurprisingly, the Alzheimer’s association described this as “obviously false”.
“In reality, in the last 10 available years (2014-2023), Less than 14% New National Alzheimer’s projects Institutes of Health (NIH) focused on the amyloid beta as therapeutic target “, the organization wrote“In September 2024, The National Institute of Aging Invested in 495 pharmacological and non -pharmacological trials. Note that the search for Alzheimer’s is focused on the amyloid to the exclusion of other targets is clearly wrong. “”
If I, personally, I wanted more robust medical research and an eternal life (I don’t do it), engraving the wheels of a largely Avoid funding for science would be a strange way to get there. But this is the kind of inconsistency that we expect from technological oligarchs: they say what benefits them, even if it is a nonsense to face, even if the reflection of a moment reveals that it is manifestly false. What is embarrassing is the newspaper of the record giving them a free reign to do so.
