The human brain is mysterious and complicated. So much so, one might be tempted to argue that it only makes sense that we still don’t have a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, despite decades of research. But this isn’t the whole story. We’ve partnered with Vox’s Unexplainable science podcast to talk about how Alzheimer’s researchers have been stubbornly pursuing a single theory for decades. The Amyloid Hypothesis is the reigning champ amongst pharmaceutical companies and scientific scholars and it has pushed all other theories to the wayside. Over the years scientists have developed many drugs based on the Amyloid Hypothesis but the the clinical trials keep failing. Now some researchers are starting to wonder if the reason we still don’t have a cure is that we’ve put all of our scientific eggs in one faulty basket.  You can hear more about the Alzheimer’s disease on the previous Distillations Podcast episodes: The Alzheimer’s Copernicus Problem Parts 1 and 2.

Credits:

Distillations:

Hosts: Alexis Pedrick and Elisabeth Berry Drago Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer

Unexplainable:

This episode was produced by Rigo Hernandez, Alexis Pedrick, Dylan Scott, and Byrd Pinkerton. It was edited by Noam Hassenfeld and Brian Resnick, with help from Meradith Hoddinott and Mandy Nguyen, who also did the fact checking. Noam Hassenfeld wrote the music, Cristian Ayala did the mixing and sound design. 

Image courtesy of Vox Media Group.