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  "path": "/archives/2026-jan-apr.html#23_March_2026_(Alzheimer's_drug_that_occasionally_kills_patients)",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-24T03:18:43.000Z",
  "site": "https://stallman.org",
  "tags": [
    "alleged conspiracy"
  ],
  "textContent": "A drug that is used to slow Alzheimer's disease occasionally kills patients. This article reports on an alleged conspiracy to get the drug wrongfully approved, and threats against someone who wrote about deaths that it caused.\n\nof the medical system by Big Pharma is rife, and it does a lot of harm. Threats of violence against journalists are part of the evil of fascism.\n\nBut this drug raises an deeper question. Can a treatment for Alzheimer's disease be beneficial for patients, and thus morally deserve approval, despite killing a small fraction of the patients who take it?\n\nAlzheimer's disease turns its victims slowly into zombies. Although the patient's body continues to live, the person who became a zombie is dead. This begs the question, if a certain drug gives a large fraction of patients several more years of non-zombie life, but kills a small fraction of them, does that make it a failure? If on the average it extends patients' non-zombie life, does that make it a bet worth making, one that drug regulations should allow people to make?\n\nThis question is important to me personally because I can envision being in that situation in a few years.",
  "title": "Alzheimer's drug that occasionally kills patients"
}