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Alzheimer's hearing March 20: A plea for more pharma drugs and research cash

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News from our parallel or overlapping mercury-toxic universe:

On Tuesday, March 20 families of Alzheimer's patients talked to Capitol legislators about the personal and public costs of dementia health care. Sen. Barbara Mikulski held a hearing entitled "The State of Alzheimer's Research."

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2590491n?source=search_video

According to the CBS report, the Alzheimer's Association says that treatment for the disorder costs Federal taxpayers $120 billion a year, via Medicare. A person on the CBS clip stated that Alzheimer's patients are predicted to eventually take all the Medicare funds; another said that these costs will bankrupt the country.

Senate proposals included $3,000 tax credit for caregivers, long-term care deduction, and increasing research to $1.3 billion.

Egge spoke at Chairman Mikulski's hearing; he's director of the Alzheimer's Disease Project at The Center for Health Transformation (founded by Newt Gingrich).http://www.healthtransformation.net/content/Files/Egge%20Testimony%20-%20AD%20Hearing.pdf

Egge mentions brain imaging, biomarkers, screening, genome-wide association studies, and animal models -- particularly a 4-year-old study (Oddo S et al. Triple-Transgenic Model of Alzheimer's Disease with Plaques and Tangles: Intracellular Ab and Synaptic Dysfunction. Neuron, 2003; 39:409-421.)

Egge's report states on page 6, "AD therapy development ... will continue to require substantial investments to be made by biopharma and medical device companies far in advance of what are, at best, uncertain prospects at the close of their development cycles."

On pages 7-8 Egge compares the Alzheimer's issue to Hurricane Katrina and the AIDS epidemic, stating that "strong research funding" and "accelerated FDA review" are "a preemption strategy" that "yielded dramatic results." After Egge's article is more related material from Gingrich and Gandy, MD, PhD, who mentions "immunotherapy" for Alzheimer's -- testing on a vaccine.

Senator Burr showed up late and at the conclusion he pleaded for more FDA funding to push pharma drugs more quickly through the regulation pipeline. On a related note, this March 7, 2007 article from the CorpWatch website:

"The integrity of the FDA review process is also vulnerable to charges of conflict of interest over the fees the cash-strapped agency accepts from the drug companies. Under a law sponsored by U.S. Senator Burr a decade ago, the FDA charges from nearly $50,000 to nearly $900,000 to fast track a drug, according to the Winston-Salem Journal. Since 1992, drug companies have paid the FDA $1.7 billion to speed up the approval process for particular drugs."

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14401

I didn't see the entire hearing on C-SPAN; folks who don't need $90 for food can buy a recording.

http://www.c-spanstore.org/shop/index.php?main_page=product_video_info & cPath=6_11 & products_id=197228-1

A few mentions of genetic predispositions, but I heard nothing of mercury or aluminum exposure.

- Hokkanen

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