An article posted in the May issue of Molecular Therapy, the journal of the American Society of Gene Therapy is optimistic they're on the right track towards curing Alzheimers disease. My aunt had Alzheimers: she couldn't remember what she ate or how long ago. She couldn't remember how to button her blouse; but she could remember her wedding day and events from her childhood just as though they were happening right then. Alzheimer's truly is a cruel disease and a cure is needed, however sometimes the way science goes about finding the cure doesn't make a lot of sense; but what do I know - I skipped science in school.
When I see articles such as this one, I have a few questions. First of all, I didn't know mice had Alzheimer's. And if they do, do mice call it by that name, or do they call it something like Mickielucus or Minniejitis or Jerriatrics? My next question would be, "How does one tell if a rat can't remember something? Did they get lost in a maze and just sit down and zone out? As a fiscal conservative, I'm wondering why we're wasting money trying to keep rodents from getting old and forgetting stuff. Do we need them to remember where they hid the cheese or which holes will get them back into my house? I'd rather invest money in exterminating mice, not medicating them.
The article said that the mice who received the vaccine were genetically engineered to express large amounts of amyloid beta protein. So science can't cure Alzheimer's but it can reproduce it; sounds like what Lucifer did when he tried to improve on the Creator's design. Reading deeper into the article, scientists from the University of Rochester Medical Center used a herpes virus stripped of the viral genes to create the vaccine. That's just what I need, to get herpes and not have the pleasure of remembering how I got it.
Give me Dr. Victor Frankenstein. He didn't waste money on lab rats. If he needed to transplant an arm or a leg, he'd go dig one up and sew it on his patient. If he needed a brain, he'd go over to the local community college and whack a professor and shove his brain inside his patient's skull. If his patient had a bad ticker, he'd hook him up to a big ol' defribrilator and zap him with a few million volts. Frankenstein was more concerned with function than with form. His patient could always go to a plastic surgeon once the parts were all in place.
The article says that it will be several years before this vaccine is safe to use on humans. By then science will have discovered even more clues into how our complex bodies perform. Maybe they'll be able to tell me why my feet smell and my nose runs and, miracle of miracles, they'll come up with a blue pill that will make my weenie bigger all the time instead of just four hours - if I'm lucky!
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