A vaccine to prevent Alzheimer’s and the remedy for spiritual blindness

Researchers announced recently that they are working on a vaccine to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. A team from the University of New Mexico has been developing the concept for five years and has begun testing their vaccine on mice.

Mice with Alzheimer’s disease were injected with the vaccine and then given a series of maze-like tests. The mice that received the vaccine performed much better than those that didn’t.

However, the vaccine has not yet been shown to work in humans. The developers are hoping to raise the $2 million needed to create a clinical version they can test in people. Once they produce a vaccine that’s safe for humans, they will have to submit it to the FDA for approval. This could take another five years.

Imagine a scenario where these researchers perfected their vaccine but didn’t tell the world what they had accomplished. Future Alzheimer’s patients would then develop a disease that could have been prevented.

In such a scenario, who would we blame for their illness?

“Bring out the people who are blind”

The Lord declared through his prophet, “Bring out the people who are blind, yet have eyes, who are deaf, yet have ears!” (Isaiah 43:8).

When I read this statement recently, I noted that those who have eyes but are blind may not know that they are sightless. Those who have ears but are deaf may not know that they cannot hear.

If they have eyes and ears, they could assume that they can see and hear as well as they should.

I have entered the reading-glasses stage of life. Fine print that used to be legible now requires magnification. But if I had no memory of being able to read such print unassisted, I could assume that fine print is illegible to everyone. I wouldn’t know that my eyes are less capable than they used to be.

In short, those who don’t know that they are sightless and deaf don’t know what they don’t know. This is a metaphor for the spiritual condition of…