Ben Carson to Newsmax: New Alzheimer's Drug May Prove Effective

A new drug approved for patients with Alzheimer's disease could prove effective in people with the early stages of the disease, retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson said on Newsmax Friday.

"There's been a lot of research being done on Alzheimer's," Carson told Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "It's a very big problem in our society; the sixth leading cause of death, or in some studies, the third leading cause of death in our country."

Thursday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Eisai and Biogen's Leqembi for patients with Alzheimer's disease, and Carson noted Friday that many things have been done to try to find the causes of the disease and alleviate the symptoms.

"What happens is you develop these little neurofibrillary tangles in the brain, sort of like if you're on a racetrack or car racetrack, and then somebody starts sticking up all these barriers," said Carson. "This new drug has been shown to decrease the number of those barriers that are on that racetrack."

And if the drug is started early enough, "it potentially can have an effect," Carson said.

Carson added that there are other ways older people can help push back against Alzheimer's.

"One of the really practical things is, you know when people retire, don't just sit around and look at TV all day," he said. "Be active and get involved in some things. That has been shown to retard the process significantly."

Proper nutrition, such as eating plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables and drinking a lot of water can also help, as well as regular exercise and having a regular sleeping pattern, said Carson.

He also commented on the news that scientists at Harvard and Yale are examining "Long Vax," a new condition believed to be caused by COVID vaccinations.

The symptoms are said to be similar to those of "long COVID," reports The Daily Mail, including headaches, intense tiredness, and abnormal heart rate and blood pressure, but other symptoms appear unique to the vaccine-induced condition including tingling, burning pain, and blood circulation issues.

"Some of us have been talking about this for a long time," said Carson. "These vaccines, now have they been very helpful and saved a lot of lives? Absolutely. And this really emphasizes the fact that instead of having a one-size-fits-all situation, let's let your physician and let's let the data indicate who should be getting vaccinated because there are consequences."

Carson, who was on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, added that "people didn't talk about complications associated with the treatment, which were much greater than we usually see with vaccines," he said.

That did not mean that people shouldn't get the shots, but there also shouldn't have been a mandate that everyone should have gotten them, he said.

Carson also responded to the Supreme Court's ruling against affirmative action, saying the court made the right decision.

"Things have changed dramatically just in my lifetime," said Carson. "Affirmative action was never meant to be a permanent solution. It was to provide an avenue whereby we would be able to prove that Black Americans were just as capable of being an astroscientist or brain surgeon as anybody else, given the appropriate opportunities."

But, Carson said, "The only people who believe that Blacks are inferior intellectually are Neanderthals. We don't have to do that anymore."

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