[Udik]

Well, it's not for a sore knee. Is there anything more unapproved than an irreversible disease that destroys your mind in the space of a few years? It's not like cancer, from which you might be cured, or at least with which you can have a meaningful life until your eventual death. It is a slow motion process of erasure that is well on its way at the moment of the first diagnosis. Taking the wrong medicine could shorten your brain's life of how much, a year perhaps? Still worth trying.

[FreeFull]

Taking chemicals which haven't been made for human consumption and haven't been tested thoroughly could render you dead much faster than that.

[callesgg]

Dead can to be honest be better than full blown Alzheimer's.

[tormeh]

This. If there's a 10% chance it works and you don't die, I bet a lot of Alzheimer's patients would jump on it.

[roywiggins]

Some people go to Switzerland for specific chemicals to render them dead as fast as possible, since they see it as preferable to living with Alzheimer's.

Admittedly it seems like a bit of a gamble to just start popping drugs whether they've been studied or not, but people spend lots of money on "natural" supplements which are at least usually reasonably safe but are even less likely to work.

[TrevorJ]

Alzheimer's is such an awful way to go, I can see how people would chance it.

[sliverstorm]

When it comes to rapid onset dementia, that's a risk many people are willing to take.

[pizza]

Yes, obviously. But what about new chemicals where testing has been done, without significant observed damage? Is that considered safe after enough observations, or would a single fatality skew your risk-minimizing behavior?