Peter Thiel is completely mistaken about Alzheimer’s

The New York Occasions ran a lengthy interview this morning between columnist Ross Douthat and enterprise capitalist and PayPal founder Peter Thiel. There is a motive it was revealed within the opinion part.

Thiel, a Trump booster whose allies — together with Vice President JD Vance — now litter the White Home, was given free reign to debate quite a lot of subjects throughout over an hour of softball questions. Is Greta Thunberg the literal antichrist? Are the three predominant ideological faculties in Europe environmentalism, “Islamic Shariah regulation” and “Chinese language Communist totalitarian takeover”? Is AI “woke” and able to following Elon Musk to Mars? Peter appears to assume so! Maybe the “simply asking questions” college of journalism may add “hey, what the fuck are you speaking about” to its repertoire.

Admittedly, many of those assertions fall squarely into the realm of issues that exist inside Thiel’s thoughts palace moderately than verifiable details, with not less than one notable exception. Comparatively early of their chat, Peter tells Ross the next [emphasis ours]:

It is a fairly daring declare! It is also fully unfaithful.

“There was no therapy 40 or 50 years in the past for Alzheimer’s illness,” Sterling Johnson, a professor of Geriatrics and Gerontology on the College of Wisconsin, Madison, instructed Engadget. “What we have been capable of do within the final 20 years has been truly fairly extraordinary. We have developed markers that assist us determine when this illness begins, utilizing the utilizing amyloid markers and tau biomarkers, we all know that the illness truly begins 20 years earlier than the signs do, and that could be a vital factor to know if we’re going to forestall this illness.”

In the mean time, Alzheimer’s stays incurable. However the absence of a miracle treatment doesn’t negate the accomplishments so far in detection and prevention. “The primary remedies have been these window dressing remedies. It is like treating the signs such as you would deal with a chilly […] The primary era of amyloid remedy was that form of strategy the place it simply addressed the signs by amping up the neurons and growing the neurotransmitters accessible to the to the mind cells.” Johnson, whose staff runs one of many largest and longest studies on individuals in danger for growing Alzheimer’s illness, added, “Now we now have alternatives to really modify the illness biology by the amyloid pathway, but in addition we’re centered on the opposite proteinopathy — which is tau — and there is scientific trials underway.”

Thiel, a well known advocate for developments in radical life extension (together with a reported curiosity in injecting himself with the blood of younger individuals) sees the state of scientific analysis on this space as sluggish and threat averse. However the groundbreaking work is going on at this second. Professor Johnson pointed to a monoclonal antibody referred to as gantenerumab. In an early take a look at of 73 members with inherited mutations that may trigger them to overproduce amyloid within the mind, it minimize the variety of members who developed Alzheimer’s signs virtually in half. “The massive phase-three prevention trials are occurring proper now.” These are utilizing lecanemab and donanemab, two different monoclonal remedies, which Johnson clarified are “already recognized to be higher than gantenerumab at clearing out beta-amyloid.”

For somebody who fashions himself as a heterodox thinker, Thiel definitely appears to have came upon a remarkably related speaking level to present Trump administration FDA head Robert F Kennedy Jr. “Alzheimer’s is a really, superb instance of how [National Institute of Health] has gone off the rails over the previous 20 years in the past with analysis on amyloid plaques” Kennedy said at a Division of Well being budgetary listening to final month. He claimed the NIH was “reducing off another speculation” as a result of “corruption.”

Unsurprisingly, the Alzheimer’s Affiliation has referred to as this “demonstrably false.”

“In actuality, over the newest 10 years accessible (2014-2023), less than 14% of recent Nationwide Institutes of Well being (NIH) Alzheimer’s tasks centered on amyloid beta because the therapeutic goal,” the group wrote, “As of September 2024, the National Institute on Aging was investing in 495 pharmacological and non-pharmacological trials. To state that Alzheimer’s analysis is concentrated on amyloid to the exclusion of different targets is clearly mistaken.”

If I, personally, wished extra strong medical analysis and an opportunity at everlasting life (I do not), greasing the wheels of an administration broadly gutting funding for science could be an odd approach to make that occur. However that is the form of incoherence we have come to count on from tech oligarchs: they are saying what advantages them, even when it is nonsense on its face, even when a second’s reflection reveals it to be patently false. What’s embarrassing is the paper of report giving them free reign to do it.

Replace June 27, 2025 2:15ET: This story now contains extra scientific trial data.