Alzheimer's? Why?

[Michaelangelica]

Mind & Brain / Alzheimer's
Is Alzheimer's Like a Strange Form of Brain Cancer?

[COLOR="rgb(255, 140, 0)"] Biochemist Peter Davies began investigating Alzheimer’s disease in the 1970s, long before its full impact became clear.
By 2030 roughly 7.5 million Americans will have this debilitating neurodegenerative disorder. Already Alzheimer’s costs the country $148 billion a year; we urgently need to find the cause—and a cure.[/COLOR]
For years the prevailing theory was that memory loss was caused by protein fragments, so-called plaques and tangles, that accumulate in the brain. Davies, now at the Litwin-Zucker Center for the Study of Alzheimer’s Disease and Memory Disorders in Manhasset, New York, suspects a different culprit. His hunch is that the mechanisms controlling cell division have gone wrong—somewhat like what happens in cancer—and that plaques and tangles are the result. In the quest for answers, Davies has led hundreds of studies and examined more than 6,000 brains.

Is Alzheimer's Like a Strange Form of Brain Cancer? | Alzheimer's | DISCOVER Magazine
this implies that most of the Alzheimer's research now is going in the wrong direction. The wrong srtategy is being taken or horse is being backed.

[paigetheoracle]

This isn't so much a reason why but an attempt to clarify the problem. I have a brother and sister-in-law that both have it. What I've noticed is that they 'know' things but cannot express them verbally - that is they still have the memories of their experiences but have lost the social language to communicate them, 'verbally' i.e. use words/ sound patterns or 'subjective language to describe objective events. So visual and sensory experience hasn't really gone but the verbal bridge to social communication with others (I base this not only on what I've seen of their stumblings and brightening up when you grasp what they are on about, so that they don't have to struggle to express it but also me and my wife's own failings in this area i.e. inability to remember certain things but to still 'know' them and the 'ability' to recognize when someone else is aware of that knowledge.