Why Are Millennials Having So Many Strokes?

Real Clear Science | Jan. 23, 2023

Strokes commonly strike the old. The average age for the devastating condition — in which blood supply to a part of the brain is blocked or when a blood vessel in the brain bursts — is around 71.4 years in men and 76.9 years in women. Millennials, however, are starting to bring those averages down.

Now ranging in age from 27 to 42, Millennials are suffering strokes at higher rates than their forebears did at the same age, reversing a 40-year decline in stroke deaths. Between 2003 and 2012, there was a 32% spike in strokes among 18- to 34-year-old women and a 15% increase for men in the same age range, according to CDC researchers. When Scientific American further parsed the data, they found that the hike was mostly centered in the West and Midwest, where stroke rates among young people rose 70% and 34%, respectively, with particularly sharp increases in urban areas. Now, about one in ten people who has a stroke in the U.S. is under the age of 45.

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The Link Between the Massive Drop in Birth Rates and mRNA Vaccines is Undeniable

Daily Skeptic | Jan .24, 2023

Shouldn’t the alarm bells be ringing? Why haven’t the authorities long since swung into action to assure the public that a full independent public investigation is well underway?

To a critical ear, the silence is as deafening as it is worrying. After 11 months of official reports of a sustained fall in the birth rate, the Swedish mainstream media have reacted. However, news reports omit any reference to a possible involvement of the elephant in the room: mRNA vaccines. So, what is the evidence that we should all have an opportunity to consider?

The number of children born in Sweden has decreased by an average of 8.6% over the period from January to November 2022. The largest percentage decreases occurred over the most recent three months of reporting (September-November 2022). Over this period, 11.7% fewer children were born in Sweden to women aged 18 to 45 years, based on the figure expected from regression analysis of data from the previous 10 years.

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The FAA wants to play hardball with the pilots and flight attendants. Game on!

Mims had “no comment” when asked about why the FAA is ignoring pilot deaths and disability from the COVID vaccines. He referred me to the press office who also had “no comment.” In other words, they refuse to engage in dialog to resolve the problem.

If you work in airline/airport infrastructure (pilot, flight attendant, baggage handler, air traffic controller, etc), please sign the petition and tell 10 of your friends to sign.

Otherwise, if you are a passenger, for the next 3 months, every time you take a trip on a plane, print out 10 copies of this flier and hand it to flight attendants, ticket counter representatives, and pilots (or ask the flight attendant to give it to the pilots).

If everyone who reads this article takes this simple action, we will destroy the false “safe and effective” narrative when the FAA holds their public hearing and all the injured pilots and flight attendants testify (we estimate that there are thousands of them).

Thanks!

Our goal is to reach 100% of all pilots and flight attendants for every airline in the US.

Today I spoke with the Deputy Administrator of the FAA, Bradley Mims.

I identified myself as the journalist that is causing them so much trouble and asked him for his reaction to our call for the FAA to investigate pilot/flight attendant injuries and deaths.

His response: “No comment.”

He referred me to the press office.

They also had “no comment.”

We have people involved in our nation’s critical infrastructure who have been seriously harmed, disabled, or killed by the COVID vaccines, in some cases, putting passenger lives at risk. And the agency responsible for air safety refuses to investigate ANY such incidents. When asked about the lack of investigation, they reply “no comment.”

Wow. This is stunning.

Next, I sent the following email to the DOT pressoffice email:

Next, I emailed the CEOs of United and American Airlines using their personal emails:

I’ll update this article if I hear back from them. Don’t hold your breath.

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WALKING DEAD? Do Covid vaccines poke holes in the blood-brain barrier and cause neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's?

Image: WALKING DEAD? Do Covid vaccines poke holes in the blood-brain barrier and cause neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s?

(Natural News) The entire world of natural health advocates, who tune in to truth media and independent sources for their nutrition, health, and science news, are well-aware of the short-term dangers and repercussions of the “clot shot” Covid “vaccines,” but nobody has seen any long-term health detriment, because it’s only been two years since the scamdemic broke out.

Now, because science is revealing the Wuhan virus jabs inflict damage to the central nervous system, the vascular system, the immune system, and the brain, what will the long-term results be for those who get multiple jabs, boosters, and even flu shots, all with toxic ingredients that cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB)? How many ‘zombies’ will be roaming the earth, suffering from dementia, due to chronic inflammation, brain micro-bleeding, and permanently damaged neurons in their brain? Will several billion humans who have been injected with the most dangerous “vaccines” ever created, mRNA, become a real-life version of the walking dead?

“Sophisticated Healthcare” means medicine and vaccines that create and exacerbate neurodegenerative diseases

The long-standing myth that all vaccines are “safe and effective” has been absolutely and entirely destroyed by the Covid clot shots. Nearly all natural health advocates already knew that the MMR, flu shots, HPV, and Small Pox jabs contain horrific ingredients that can cause irreparable harm to the human body and brain, but now we’re all witnessing the mRNA-jabbed zombies not only dying “unexpectedly” and “suddenly” from the clot shots, but so many others beginning to suffer long-term health damage.

Brighteon.TV

How much of this damage is affecting their central nervous system and brain function? That is the ultimate question now, and evidence-based answers are beginning to surface as each day goes by.

Biologists are now discovering the reason for so many of the Covid-vaxxed people suffering from strokes, myocarditis, thrombosis, and neurological disorders – and the reason is consistent – nanoparticles. The vascular system is the main area of transfection of these nanoparticles (spike proteins and prions), as the majority of them do NOT remain at the site of injection (in muscle tissue), but travel throughout the circulatory system.

Why are these spike protein nanoparticles, that travel throughout the body, so dangerous to our overall health? As biologists are discovering, our immune systems are attacking the vaccine particles, destroying billions of endothelial cells, literally “skinning alive” the inner lining of our blood vessels. See the diagram below.

In other words, all the human cells that are penetrated by these toxic, virus-mimicking nano-particles will be destroyed by the immune system, including the destruction of all transfected cells, even the ones in vital cleansing organs and the brain. The biologists studying this are revealing that the injected sheeple are experiencing 80 billion cells destroyed by just 2 shots of mRNA, and this doesn’t even account for boosters yet.

According to a team of top-notch biologists, this is why the Covid vaccines have the ability and “potential to create a wave of neurodegenerative diseases, adding a new urgency to stop the vaccine dystopia.”

The human brain faces the biggest endothelial risk of all from the Covid gene-mutation jabs and BBB leakage

Did you know that the human brain contains over 400 miles of blood vessels, more than 6 times the vascular system of the lungs, which means the brain faces the biggest endothelial risk of all from the Covid gene-mutation jabs. Many doctors, scientists, and biologists have focused their discussions about vaccine damage and vaccine violence around organs like the liver, ovaries, heart and lungs, but now they’re estimating there can be as many as 2 million nanoparticles in the brain, from the mRNA jabs.

Because the brain-blood barrier is supposed to be leak-proof, researchers assumed only limited quantities of pseudo-virus particles would penetrate it, but that hypothesis was wrong, due to transfection of BBB endothelial cells.

Therefore, even though the human body has an incredible ability to repair itself, this cellular damage in the brain from vaccines is diminishing functionalities, leading to motor skill dysfunctions and neurodegenerative disorders. Researchers are now describing the location of the BBB leaks related to specific degenerative diseases:

  • Hippocampus ? mild cognitive impairment
  • Grey & white matter ? Alzheimer disease
  • Basal ganglia ? Parkinson disease
  • Caudate nucleus ? Huntington disease
  • Perivascular lesions ? multiple sclerosis
  • Heart ? myocarditis and pericarditis
  • Lungs? pulmonary embolism
  • Aorta and arteries ? thrombosis, strokes and arterial collapse
  • Liver ? hepatitis
  • Tendons ? tendonitis

Vaccine violence from the mRNA jabs is what we have been witnessing over the past 15 months or so. The truth is coming out, and the long-term effects of Covid jabs are starting to rear their ugly heads. The “triple-vaxxed” sheeple are starting to look a lot like the ‘walking dead.’ How long until the earth is populated with a few billion spike protein zombies?

Be sure to bookmark Vaccines.news to your favorite independent websites for updates on experimental gene therapy injections the CDC and fake news claim are “safe and effective” when they’re really dangerous and brain-damaging.

Sources for this article include:

Pandemic.news

CovidMythBuster.substack.com

NaturalNews.com

Health Care — A Monopoly of Monsters

  • Americans pay twice as much for their health care yet get the worst care of any developed Western nation. And, while other countries guarantee treatment regardless of income, treatment in the U.S. depends on whether you can afford costly health insurance, or have a job that provides it

  • Nearly 70% of Americans support a Medicare for all scheme over the current health insurance system and making health care affordable was the second-highest priority of Americans in a 2022 poll. Medicaid will terminate benefits for an estimated 15 million Americans once the public health emergency ends

  • One of the reasons why U.S. health care is so exorbitantly expensive is because it’s a conglomerate of monopolies. This results in higher costs while discouraging innovation and efficiency optimization

  • Strategies that could lower costs and improve care include leveraging economies of scale, offering hospital services seven days a week, and providing at-home health care services

  • Another thing that could go a long way toward improving medical outcomes and lowering patient costs is banning drug ads, especially in electronic health record (EHR) systems and patient portals, as such ads drive up costs and result in poor prescribing decisions that put patients at risk

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As noted by The Hill’s anchor Briahna Joy Gray in the video above, Americans pay twice as much for their health care yet get the worst care of any developed Western nation. And, while other countries guarantee treatment regardless of income, treatment in the U.S. depends on whether you can afford costly health insurance, or have a job that provides it.

According to polls cited by Gray, nearly 70% of Americans support a Medicare for all scheme over the current health insurance system, and making health care affordable was the second-highest priority of Americans in a 2022 poll.

Concerns about the cost of health care are likely to increase even further once Medicaid starts terminating benefits for an estimated 15 million Americans, which is expected to begin in April 2023. These were people who qualified for Medicaid and/or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage during the pandemic emergency.

Once the public health emergency (PHE) ends, this coverage will be rescinded.

“Are we really going to go back to letting 68,000 people die each year simply because they’re too poor to live?” Gray asks. President Biden campaigned on a public option for health care, but that promise has yet to come to fruition — possibly because he took more money from the health insurance industry than any previous president.

Former President Obama folded when it came to a public option after the industry lobbied hard to prevent it, and while so-called “Obamacare” promised to be an affordable option, health insurance prices and industry profits soared once the Affordable Care Act was enacted.

Since people were financially penalized for not having insurance, insurance companies took advantage and raised prices across the board, even though we were promised that wouldn’t happen.

The public option would (allegedly) allow Americans to purchase a government-backed Medicaid-like plan at a competitive price. The idea is that government would not seek to make a profit on the public option in the way private health insurers do.

There are many reasons for why U.S. health care is so exorbitantly expensive, but one of them is because it’s a monopoly or, as Dr. Robert Pearl, former CEO of The Permanente Group, describes it, “a conglomerate of monopolies.” In a January 16, 2023, Forbes article, he writes:

“In any industry, market consolidation limits competition, choice and access to goods and services, all of which drive up prices. But there’s another — often overlooked — consequence. Market leaders that grow too powerful become complacent. And, when that happens, innovation dies.

Healthcare offers a prime example. De facto monopolies abound in almost every healthcare sector: Hospitals and health systems, drug and device manufacturers, and doctors backed by private equity. The result is that U.S. healthcare has become a conglomerate of monopolies.

For two decades, this intense concentration of power has inflicted harm on patients, communities and the health of the nation. For most of the 21st century, medical costs have risen faster than overall inflation, America’s life expectancy (and overall health) has stagnated, and the pace of innovation has slowed to a crawl …

[M]erged hospitals and powerful health systems have raised the price, lowered the quality and decreased the convenience of American medicine.”

According to Pearl, 40 of our largest health care systems combined own 2,073 different hospitals. That’s approximately one-third of all emergency and acute care facilities in the country. The top 10 health care systems combined own one-sixth of all hospitals and have an annual net revenue of $226.7 billion.

While there are all sorts of antitrust and anticompetitive laws on the books, “legal loopholes and intense lobbying continue to spur hospital consolidation,” Pearl says. As a result of all this consolidating, hundreds of communities have just one option for inpatient care. This means there’s no competition in terms of pricing, so prices tend to go up, while quality of care often declines since patients can’t complain and go elsewhere.

As noted by Pearl, health care could be far more affordable, and medical outcomes could be improved, if only hospital-system administrators were willing to embrace more innovative care-delivery. For example, they could:

  • Leverage economies of scale — Size equals cost savings, so when larger hospitals acquire smaller ones, they gain negotiating power. They can also eliminate redundancies. This “could and should result in lower prices for medical care,” Pearl says.

    That’s not happening, however. Instead, inefficiencies at both hospitals persist. Why? Because “hospital administrators prefer to raise prices … rather than undergo the painstaking process of becoming more efficient.” Pearl goes on to give the following example:

    “Following M&A [merger and acquisition], health systems continue to schedule orthopedic, cardiac and neurosurgical procedures across multiple low-volume hospitals.

    They’d be better off creating centers of excellence and doing all total joint replacements, heart surgeries and neurosurgical procedures in a single hospital or placing each of the three specialties in a different one.

    Doing so would increase the case volumes for surgeons and operative teams in that specialty, augmenting their experience and expertise — leading to better outcomes for patients.”

  • Offering services seven days a week — Many hospitals cut back on services on the weekends, as staff prefer to have weekends off. As a result, patients admitted on a Friday evening or weekend end up spending, on average, one extra day in the hospital because procedures are postponed until Monday. Not only does this result in additional cost for the patient, it also places them at higher risk of hospital-acquired infection and medical errors.

  • Offering at-home services — During the pandemic, patients were frequently sent home with intravenous medication and monitoring devices when hospitals ran out of beds. A nurse would come check on them if or when needed, and according to Pearl, “Clinical outcomes were equivalent to (and often better than) the current inpatient care and costs were markedly less.”

    Hospitals could easily expand on this approach “with readily available technologies,” Pearl says. For example, a team of clinicians in a central location could monitor hundreds of patients in their homes, around the clock, using biomonitoring devices and video streaming.

Another thing that could go a long way toward improving medical outcomes is banning drug ads, especially in electronic health record (EHR) systems. Yes, 15% of electronic health record systems actually feature pharmaceutical marketing to doctors while they’re entering your medical data.

“Drug ads in electronic health record (EHR) systems and patient portals drive up costs and result in poor prescribing decisions that put patients at risk.”

Some EHRs are even subsidized by drug company partnerships. While 15% is a minority, it’s still considerable when you consider that 80% of doctors have adopted EHRs,

with more adopting them each year. As reported by the American Medical Association (AMA):

“Research cited in the AMA board report shows that exposure to physician-directed advertising is associated with less effective, lower-quality prescribing decisions and that exposure to pharmaceutical company-provided information leads to higher prescribing frequency and higher costs.

In one instance, Practice Fusion, a company Allscripts purchased in 2018, used an ad-supported revenue model. After a federal investigation, Practice Fusion admitted to soliciting and receiving kickbacks from opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma in exchange for clinical decision support (CDS) alerts promoting unnecessary opioids at the point of prescribing in their EHR system …

The Pain CDS in Practice Fusion’s EHR displayed alerts more than 230 million times between 2016 and 2019. Those who received the alerts prescribed extended-release opioids at a higher rate than those that didn’t.

‘This activity by Practice Fusion demonstrates how the EHR can present opportunities for stakeholders to abuse the system, inappropriately influence physicians’ decisions and put patients at risk,’ the board report says.”

A report by CMI Media Group

also reveals the power EHR-based ads have to massively increase prescriptions for a given drug. Using its recommended EHR messaging strategy, CMI was able to increase prescriptions of a drug by 388%, while prescriptions for its competitor dropped by 36%.

“Further, when the campaign was paused for a month, scripts dropped 13% compared to the previous month. When the campaign resumed, scripts increased 23%,” CMI Media Group reported.

As a result of the AMA board’s findings, the AMA House of Delegates, the legislative and policy-making body of the AMA, amended its policy and now opposes direct-to-prescriber drug ads in EHRs, medical reference software and e-prescribing software.

The policy also opposes the preferential placement of brand-name medications in e-prescription search results or listings, and instead encourages e-prescribing and EHR companies to list generic medication names first.

That said, advertising companies are still looking for novel ways to market their clients drugs through EHRs. For example, CMI Media Group recommends

focusing on providing patient instructions instead of “glossy promotional messaging,” or sponsoring things like instructions on how brands are coded in the system or drug titration recommendations.

While such information is said to address real needs by doctors and patients, at the end of the day, it’s just another strategy meant to increase sales.

Another strategy that many might not realize is pure advertising is the offering of financial assistance and patient education through patient portals. “With approximately 30% of first time prescriptions not being filled, ensuring patients are receptive is incredibly important,” CMI Media Group writes.

Considering the fact that drug ads in EHRs can entice doctors to make lethal drug decisions, in addition to driving up costs by promoting brand name drugs, I believe they should be banned altogether. After all, doctors are already influenced by drug reps and drug ads in medical journals.

In 2016 alone, drug companies spent $637 million on nearly 100,000 pages of print advertisements in medical journals that reach 90% of doctors.

For journals, drug ads are a great source of revenue, but that cash flow comes at a price, namely patient care and safety.

As noted in “Pharmaceutical Advertising in Medical Journals; Revisiting a Long-Standing Relationship,” an editorial in the Chest Journal:

“Advertisements enable pharmaceutical manufacturers … to sway prescribing practices in favor of the product being advertised, regardless of whether it is the most efficacious or cost-effective option for a patient.

Although some physicians may not believe that they are influenced by advertising, studies indicate a return on investment between $3 and $5 for every dollar a pharmaceutical company spends on journal advertising.”

One example of how ads can steer doctors in the wrong direction is that of Acthar Gel, a repository corticotropin injection advertised in the Chest Journal in 2016. In March that year, Chest editorial board member Mark Metersky wrote a letter to the editor questioning the evidence supporting its use.

Not only did this formulation of corticotropin cost nearly $34,000 for a 5-milliliter vial, there was no reliable evidence that it was any better than oral corticosteroids that cost pennies per pill — and this despite being on the market for more than 50 years. Metersky also cited evidence showing there were “substantial financial ties between top prescribers of the drug and its manufacturer.”

Three other physicians wrote a Chest editorial in support of Metersky’s letter, and the manufacturer subsequently withdrew the ad. No doubt they weren’t happy about it, seeing how a one-page ad cost about $6,400, which means the ad paid for itself five times over if it resulted in a single prescription.

In a case such as this, what responsibility does the journal have? Should they allow ads for ineffective drugs that cost tens of thousands of dollars more than proven ones? Should medical journals advertise drugs at all?

A study

of 83 drug ads featured in medical journals also found that nearly half of them failed to comply with one or more of the requirements in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s prescription drug advertising guidelines, which makes this kind of advertising even more questionable. Apparently, drug makers are playing fast and loose with advertising rules when they’re marketing to doctors. As noted by the authors:

“Few physician-directed print pharmaceutical advertisements adhere to all FDA guidelines; over half fail to quantify serious risks. The FDA could better protect public health by creating new more objective advertisement guidelines requiring transparent presentation of basic safety and efficacy information.”

Without doubt, the American health care system is beyond broken. Sure, it excels when it comes to emergencies, but when it comes to treatment of chronic diseases, which is what gobbles up most of our health care spending, it’s completely inept.

Unfortunately, it’s about to get even worse. As detailed in “The Redesign of Our Food System Is a Plot for Control,” President Biden has launched a “Food Is Medicine” program that will allow doctors to prescribe food the way they prescribe drugs.

At the same time, the globalist cabal is redesigning the food system to eliminate natural whole foods such as meat and dairy and replace them with patented synthetics. Once such a system is in place, there’s really no hope for health, as doctors will be pushing synthetic drugs AND foods.

To circumvent this, we must focus on building alternative, parallel health care systems that are outside the conventional paradigm. Some medical groups are already doing this, which is great news. On an individual level, you’d be wise to get as healthy as you possibly can now, just to avoid any unnecessary hospital encounters. For my top tips, check out “The Most Important Topics of Our Time.”

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FDA Gives Accelerated Approval for Risky Alzheimer’s Pill

fda gives approval for risky alzheimers pill

  • The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval for the Alzheimer’s disease drug lecanemab (Leqembi)

  • The drug, a monoclonal antibody, binds to amyloid beta in the brain

  • The most common reactions included amyloid-related imaging abnormalities, or ARIA, which involves swelling and bleeding in the brain that can be life-threatening. During the trial, ARIA occurred more often in people with the APOE4 gene, which is considered to be the strongest risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease

  • Amyloid beta may be a symptom of Alzheimer’s — not the cause — and could even have a protective role in the disease process

  • This means drugs that work by reducing amyloid beta may be missing the problem entirely, putting patients at risk of serious adverse events for little to no benefit

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted accelerated approval for the Alzheimer’s disease drug lecanemab (Leqembi). The drug, a monoclonal antibody, binds to amyloid beta in the brain.

An 18-month study published in the New England Journal of Medicine

found Leqembi reduced markers of amyloid in early Alzheimer’s disease and led to “moderately less decline” in cognition and function compared to placebo. However, the study added, the drug was “associated with adverse events.”

The FDA granted accelerated approval of Leqembi based on the observed reduction of amyloid beta plaque. The study involved 856 patients with Alzheimer’s disease, with drug treatment started at the point of mild cognitive impairment or mild dementia, along with the confirmed presence of amyloid beta. According to the FDA:

“Patients receiving the treatment had significant dose- and time-dependent reduction of amyloid beta plaque, with patients receiving the approved dose of lecanemab, 10 milligram/kilogram every two weeks, having a statistically significant reduction in brain amyloid plaque from baseline to Week 79 compared to the placebo arm, which had no reduction of amyloid beta plaque.”

Serious adverse events were reported in 14% of those taking the drug, and 6.9% of subjects in the Leqembi group dropped out of the trial due to the adverse events.

Along with reactions to the intravenous infusion — Leqembi is given intravenously — the most common reactions included amyloid-related imaging abnormalities, or ARIA, which can be life-threatening.

ARIA may manifest as brain edema, or swelling (ARIA-E), or bleeding in the brain, known as ARIA-H, for hemorrhage.

Brain bleeding occurred in 17.3% of those taking Leqembi, compared to 9% of those in the placebo group. Brain swelling occurred in 12.6% of those in the Leqembi group, compared to 1.7% of the placebo group.

ARIA occurred more often in people with the APOE4 gene, which is considered to be the strongest risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Richard Isaacson, director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic in the Center for Brain Health at Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt College of Medicine, told CNN:

“I will prescribe this drug in the right person, at the right dose and in a very carefully monitored way, but this drug is not for everyone … I would do genetic testing for APOE4 first. I would have a frank discussion with my patients.

If someone is having side effects, if someone is on a blood-thinning medication, if someone has a problem, they need to discuss this with the treating physician, and they need to seek medical attention immediately.”

Leqembi’s wholesale price has been set at $26,500 per patient per year. This dropped from the $56,000 it was initially slated to cost, due to insurance companies threatening not to cover it.

The prescribing information for Leqembi includes a warning for ARIA, which usually occurs without symptoms, though it can lead to life-threatening events. In a news release about the drug’s accelerated approval, the FDA noted:

“ARIA most commonly presents as temporary swelling in areas of the brain that usually resolves over time and may be accompanied by small spots of bleeding in or on the surface of the brain, though some people may have symptoms such as headache, confusion, dizziness, vision changes, nausea and seizure.

Another warning for Leqembi is for a risk of infusion-related reactions, with symptoms such as flu-like symptoms, nausea, vomiting and changes in blood pressure. The most common side effects of Leqembi were infusion-related reactions, headache and ARIA.”

Aducanumab (brand name Aduhelm) is a monoclonal antibody similar to Leqembi. ARIA-E occurs in about one-third of people taking Aduhelm.

Similar to Leqembi, Aduhelm was brought to market under an accelerated approval pathway by the FDA, despite uncertainty about its clinical benefit.

Aduhelm’s accelerated approval was so controversial that three members of the FDA’s advisory panel resigned in protest.

As an amyloid beta-directed antibody drug, Aduhelm also works by targeting amyloid beta in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease, but the findings of ARIA-E in many taking the drugs are alarming.

Adam Brickman with Columbia University, New York City, suggested that the drug could potentially make cognitive decline worse instead of better. “It’s hard to put a positive spin on the neuroimaging abnormalities,” he wrote. “… [W]e simply do not know the long-term consequences.”

While Aduhelm was approved in June 2021, an 18-month investigation revealed it involved “atypical collaboration” between the FDA and Biogen, the drug’s maker, that was “rife with irregularities.”

Biogen discontinued clinical trials for the drug in March 2019 after results suggested it wouldn’t slow declines in memory, language and judgment in people with Alzheimer’s.

However, the FDA then started a “working group” with Biogen to rekindle the drug, which involved extensive meetings and calls to guide the drug’s approval. The collaboration was “unusual,” to say the least. CNN reported:

“The agency then collaborated with Biogen to draft a document used to brief an independent advisory committee that met in November 2020. The trial results were mixed, with only one showing a small benefit to patients.

At that meeting, none of the committee’s members voted to say that the studies presented strong evidence that the drug was effective at treating Alzheimer’s. The meeting was unusual, according to one former FDA adviser who had sat on the committee for several years. Dr. Aaron Kesselheim told CNN in 2021 that the relationship between the FDA and the company was out of the ordinary.”

Kesselheim, who was one of the FDA advisory panel members who resigned to protest the drug’s approval, called it “probably the worst drug approval decision in recent US history.”

In what now appears to be an ongoing trend, the FDA also granted fast-track designation to UB-311, a vaccine for Alzheimer’s disease made by biotechnology company Vaxxinity.

The shot is an anti-amyloid beta immunotherapeutic vaccine that, like Aduhelm and Leqembi, treats Alzheimer’s disease by targeting aggregated amyloid beta in the brain.

Phase 1, Phase 2a and Phase 2a Long-Term Extension trials have already been completed, with the company stating that the vaccine was “well tolerated in mild-to-moderate AD patients over three years of repeat dosing, with a safety profile comparable to placebo and no cases of amyloid-related imaging abnormalities-edema (“ARIA-E”) in the main study.”

Vaxxinity has planned a Phase 2b trial,

but no one knows what the long-term consequences of this shot will be. To date, drug development for Alzheimer’s has involved at least 300 failed trials.

One study, which was a collaboration between Washington University in St. Louis, drug companies Eli Lilly and Roche, the National Institutes of Health and others, involved 194 participants, of which 52 took Roche’s drug gantenerumab and 52 took Eli Lilly’s solanezumab.

The drugs were intended to remove amyloid beta (Aβ) from the brain, but they failed to achieve the primary outcome of the study, which was slowed cognitive decline, as measured by tests on thinking and memory. While the drugs did target amyloid beta, it had no effect on cognitive measures, with the researchers writing, “Both drugs engaged their Aβ targets but neither demonstrated a beneficial effect on cognitive measures compared to controls.”

Amyloid beta may be a symptom of Alzheimer’s — not the cause — and could even have a protective role in the disease process.

This means drugs and vaccines that work by reducing amyloid beta may be missing the problem entirely. Researchers from the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science, department of dementia and higher brain function, wrote in Frontiers in Neuroscience:

“The so-called amyloid hypothesis, that the accumulation and deposition of oligomeric or fibrillar amyloid β (Aβ) peptide is the primary cause of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), has been the mainstream concept underlying AD research for over 20 years. However, all attempts to develop Aβ-targeting drugs to treat AD have ended in failure.”

In 2009, researchers brought attention to the misguided premise of oversimplifying Alzheimer’s disease down to the amyloid-β protein precursor (AβPP) molecule, “implying that this molecule encapsulates AD so completely that the disease itself is almost of secondary importance.” This, they noted, ignores “the complexity of chronic diseases in general” and added:

“A great deal of attention has focused on amyloid-β as the major pathogenic mechanisms with the ultimate goal of using amyloid-β lowering therapies as an avenue of treatment.

Unfortunately, nearly a quarter century later, no tangible progress has been offered, whereas spectacular failure tends to be the most compelling. We have long contended, as has substantial literature, that proteinaceous accumulations are simply downstream and, often, endstage manifestations of disease.

Their overall poor correlation with the level of dementia, and their presence in the cognitively intact is evidence that is often ignored as an inconvenient truth. Current research examining amyloid oligomers, therefore, will add copious details to what is, in essence, a reductionist distraction from upstream pleiotrophic processes such as oxidative stress, cell cycle dysfunction, and inflammation.

It is now long overdue that the neuroscientists avoid the pitfall of perseverating on ‘proteinopathies’ and recognize that the continued targeting of end stage lesions in the face of repeated failure, or worse, is a losing proposition.”

The brains of most elderly people contain amyloid beta, often in amounts similar to those found in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

It doesn’t always lead to disease. Writing in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, researchers suggested that amyloid beta is a response to neuronal stress, one that functions as a protective adaptation to the disease.

Amyloid beta, they argued, accumulates relatively late in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, and while it has been found to be toxic in cell culture models, this may not hold true in humans. Instead of the prevailing notion that a mutation leads to increased amyloid beta, which leads to Alzheimer’s, the team suggested that a mutation leads to Alzheimer’s, which in turn triggers increased amyloid beta:

“Mutations lead to cellular stress, which, in turn, leads to increased amyloid-β … in AD, cellular stress precedes increases in amyloid-β … Proteins, such as amyloid-β, that are induced under oxidative conditions and act to lessen oxidative damage are typically thought of as antioxidants and, in this regard, we recently demonstrated that amyloid-β is a bona fide antioxidant that can act as a potent superoxide dismutase.”

Researchers writing in Alzheimer’s & Dementia, the Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, also suggest the accumulation of amyloid beta is a protective mechanism linked with glucose metabolism — albeit a protective mechanism that ultimately fails. They explained:

“We predict that more Aβ accumulates in regions with higher rates of glucose metabolism, reaching a maximum followed by progression of pathology … Aβ accumulation is characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) but the accumulation does not correlate with cognitive decline, unlike the rates of glucose metabolism.

… The claim explains the cognitive decline in some patients at a significantly lower level of Aβ deposition than in other patients, as well as the presence of cognitively healthy individuals with high Aβ accumulation. With further support of the hypothesis, the significance of Aβ accumulation in brains of patients with AD may require revision.”

Therefore, reliance on drugs to reduce amyloid beta may be, at best, misguided and, at worst, exposing patients to potentially life-threatening adverse effects for no benefit. Alzheimer’s disease is a complex disease that requires a holistic approach for prevention and treatment.

One of the most comprehensive assessments of Alzheimer’s risk is Dr. Dale Bredesen’s ReCODE protocol, which evaluates 150 factors, including biochemistry, genetics and historical imaging, known to contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.

In his book, “The End of Alzheimer’s: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline,”

which describes the complete protocol, you will also find a list of suggested screening tests and the recommended ranges for each test, along with some of Bredesen’s treatment suggestions, which include the use of exercise, ketogenic diet, optimizing vitamin D and other hormones, increasing sleep, meditation, detoxification and eliminating gluten and processed food.

For more details, you can download Bredesen’s full-text case paper online, which details the full program.

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