What are your thoughts on the campaign to cure Alzheimer's?

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I personally think it's a scam to get people to give them donations, without any real possibility of ever finding a cure, until the distant future. They're basically trying to find a cure for the deterioration that happens to people as they get older, which ultimately leads to their death. If they can't cure the deterioration of the body, then they definitely can't cure the deterioration of the brain. I don't have very much confidence that the medical community will find a way, until the distant future, to completely cure the deterioration of the body and the brain, thus enabling people to be forever immune from dying of natural causes.

You have a point, these sort of diseases occur due to living longer in the first place.

However the flaw in your argument is that Alzheimer is different from other dementia, it does have specific causes, it is not simply organic damage due the brain going 'off' and breaking down so to speak.

Personally the I think the real question is do we really want to live longer, and pop out more kids? That seems illogical to me.

Maybe we should be healthy, then die. So in that case why would you want people to have debilitating diseases?

Obviously any research require some funding (however not all discoveries have broken the bank). It is your choice if you believe in the cause or not.

Even so, I would prefer to have my heart or liver quit on me than my brains.

ruveyn

You have more then one? Now you tell me.... Well hopefully you only get dementia in one of your brains, they can remove that one, and you can use the others

Joking aside you do millions of brain cells in your gut, I wonder what the research is on that degrading.

Hearts and livers can be replaced. Brains can not. Transplanting the head to another body also transplants the mind inside that head to the other body. "Millions of Brain Cells in your Gut" do not a person make.

I'd like to see Alzheimer's cured, and a vaccine developed to prevent it.

I take it you weren't taking my comment seriously?

Actually a 'body' transplant has been attempted, it was partially successful in monkeys. Quite a controversial experiment though.

Sorry to hijack the topic, but related:

Would you be happy to have good health, an live to say around 90-100 years old, then "bow out", and by "bow out" I mean self euthanasia?

I think the only reason people want euthenasia is because their life has become worthless because of disease or something similar. People who are doing fine won't go willingly I think.
But why should people do that anyway? If people stay healthy longer they can keep working longer as well. We're not going to run out of money because of growing older. In fact, the richest countries in the world are the ones with extremely high median ages.

Because we need resources such as water, so consumption, and population growth are an issue.

Birth rate a flattening out at 2.5 this is unlikely to lower.

Another reason is passing on our genetic material, and then dying is still a tried an tested way to develop further.

In most developed countries the fertility rate is below the replacement rate. The light blue have fertility rate of 1-2 children, green 2-3 children. As more countries develop economically, their birth rates will probably drop as well.
Death is essential for evolution, but that moves so slowly it will not impact our societies in any meaningful way. I think it is likely humans will be able to genetically engineer themselves long before any significant evolution has occurred,
And for water we can just build water purification plants or desalienation plants. The only problem with that is that it costs a lot of energy. I think in the future we will be able to generate power so cheaply from clean sources such as solar/wind and so on, that won't be a problem either.

Exactly it will bottom at 1-3 children, meaning the population will still grow.

I'm not sure what 'campaign' you are talking about that wants money from private individuals. There already are large research programs all over the world, but these are funded like all research programs are funded: government grants, grants from organisations like the WHO, donations from trust funds, etc., etc. Altzheimer's and other forms of dementia are genetically and epigenetically complex, but with the current rapid developments in genomics, epigenetics, systems biology and neuroscience, I have little doubt that something will be found that can cure or at least stop the disease within a few decades.

My father had it in the last few years of his life. It wasn't a pretty sight. He knew he had it, too, and it made him very unhappy.

My grandfather had it. He was one of those people that was very difficult to live with, ruthless in business, a bit of an a***hole. Apparently Alzheimers made into quite a sweet but tragic character.

However said that I'm not romanticizing the condition, it is still very challenging.

I got along with my father while he had it, but his behavior became very difficult (especially combined with his Autism).

My fathers older sister, my aunt got it, and his little brother too. They both knew, and they suffered because of that knowledge. My cousin is afraid of course.
My aunt was given experimental medication and she got sharper for every day, but no one knew if it would last, - and it didn´t. She was put in a carecenter and chose, in a clear moment, to stop eating and drinking.

Dementia takes away everything, and Altzheimer accounts for a great deal of the cases.
If they could find that "cure"/stop the deterioration process, - then Halleluja for that.
I will gladly donate.