Yet another
attempt to use Bayes to put lipstick on a pig. Lowe gets it right. I love the guy.
The paper tries to make something about of a Bayesian disease progression model, but I can't make myself care much about that, either, because the treatment differences that anyone could possibly notice are just not there.
The piece de resistance
I'm sticking with what I said nearly ten years ago about another failed Lilly antibody: there's a nasty moral hazard in this business of marginal, hazy, Alzheimer's statistical benefits, because the first company that manages to get anything approved by the FDA will reap billions of dollars from the huge backlog of desperate patients and families who want something, anything, that they can use against the disease. I feel the same way about Biogen's aducanumab.
Earlier in the piece, we find yet again no correlation between plaque/tau and outcome
[T]he patients who showed the biggest decrease in brain amyloid were not correlated at all with any particular clinical improvement. Frankly, what does it mean if a patient has less amyloid protein if they're just as impaired with or without it? The real-world effects that we do care about (memory, orientation, function) are measured by the ratings just mentioned, and to me this looks like yet another therapy that simply does not work.
In due time the Gen-Whatevers are going to start asking, nay demanding, an answer to the fundamental question: why are we spending so much of our national wealth on keeping ever older Geezers alive and comfortable, when we could be devoting those resources to the health and welfare of those who can still contribute to Society? Being a (ever older) Geezer, I hope the Gen-Whatevers hold off a bit, naturally.
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