The human brain is mysterious and complicated. So much so, one might be tempted to argue that it only makes sense that we still don’t have a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, despite decades of research. But this isn’t the whole story. We’ve partnered with Vox’s Unexplainable science podcast to talk about how Alzheimer’s researchers have been stubbornly pursuing a single theory for decades. The Amyloid Hypothesis is the reigning champ amongst pharmaceutical companies and scientific scholars and it has pushed all other theories to the wayside. Over the years scientists have developed many drugs based on the Amyloid Hypothesis but the the clinical trials keep failing. Now some researchers are starting to wonder if the reason we still don’t have a cure is that we’ve put all of our scientific eggs in one faulty basket. You can hear more about the Alzheimer’s disease on the previous Distillations Podcast episodes: The Alzheimer’s Copernicus Problem Parts 1 and 2.
Credits:
Distillations:
Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer
Unexplainable:
This episode was produced by Rigo Hernandez, Alexis Pedrick, Dylan Scott, and Byrd Pinkerton. It was edited by Noam Hassenfeld and Brian Resnick, with help from Meradith Hoddinott and Mandy Nguyen, who also did the fact checking. Noam Hassenfeld wrote the music, Cristian Ayala did the mixing and sound design.
Image courtesy of Vox Media Group.
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Old Brains, New Brains: The Human Mind, Past and Present
Fads and Faith: Belief vs. Fact in the Struggle for Health
Innovation and Obsolescence: The Life, Death, and Occasional Rebirth of Technologies
Trash Talk: The Persistence of Waste
Life with HIV: Success without a Cure?
Babies on Demand: Reproduction in a Technological Age
Fogs of War: The Many Lives of Chemical Weapons
Wake up and Smell the Story: Sniffing out Health and Sickness
The Teeth Beneath Your Feet: Oddities in Urban Archaeology
Intoxication and Civilization: Beer's Ancient Past
Alchemy's Rainbow: Pigment Science and the Art of Conservation
Meet Joe Palca: A Radio Story About Making Radio Stories
Drawing History: Telling the Stories of Science through Comics and Graphic Novels
Why the Chicken Became a Nugget and Other Tales of Processed Food
Digging Up the Bodies: Debunking CSI and Other Forensics Myths
Zombies! How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Zombie Apocalypse
Atomic Power and Promise: What's Become of Our Nuclear Golden Age?
Episode 181: Chemotherapy
Episode 180: Best of Distillations #12
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