As Alzheimer’s drug developers give up on today’s patients, where is the outrage?

When virologists and drug developers were too slow in finding ways to save the lives of people with HIV/AIDS and refused to give patients access to experimental drugs 30 years ago, activists chained themselves to a balcony on the New York Stock Exchange, held demonstrations where scores were arrested, and effectively shut down the Food and Drug Administration for a day.

The lack of progress against Alzheimer’s disease has brought somewhat less outrage. Although the latest analysis of experimental Alzheimer’s drugs finds that literally zero are being tested in late-stage clinical trials to treat moderate to severe Alzheimer’s, no patient advocacy groups uttered a peep in protest.

“We need a Larry Kramer,” said Dr. Sam Gandy, a neurologist and Alzheimer’s expert at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, referring to the AIDS activist. Instead, he said, patients and their families adopt the fatalistic