West Palm Beach July 2026

14 W E S T PA L M B E A C H | J U LY 2 0 2 6 How to Cure Alzheimer’s Disease COMMUNITY N o one wants to hear the dreaded words, “you have Alzheimer’s disease,” but 11% of Americans, aged 65 years and older, already have. And the diagnosis increases with age. Alzheimer’s is a slowly progressive incurable disease stealing one’s memories and resulting in death. Alois Alzheimer first described the condition that bears his name in 1906. What has happened since? Unfortunately, not much. There have been more than 500 failed drug studies over the last 20 years. Why have so many studies failed? The average study lasted 2 years, but the endpoint they were looking for would have taken 4 – 5 years. Drug studies are expensive, costing as much as $100 million per year. Drug companies can’t make many ½ billion-dollar mistakes. There are 2 FDA approved drugs to treat the condition. Both drugs may slow progression, are expensive, and carry significant risk. Making the diagnosis depends on the quality of your health insurance or your income. Clinical history and mental status examination are used initially, but if you have good insurance or the ability to pay, the “gold standard” tests of PET/amyloid scanning, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analysis or blood biomarker testing may be performed. There is a critical need for a low-cost method to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease. The first step is to diagnose the condition earlier. Alzheimer’s changes begin 10 – 20 years before there are symptoms! Yet current testing is performed once symptoms, like mild cognitive impairment, has already occurred. They say that the eye is the window to the soul, in fact, it is a direct extension of the brain. Dr. Weiss’ hypothesis was that Alzheimer’s findings should also be found in the retina. He was right. Over more than 20 years of research, Dr. Weiss constructed a clinical device that can safely make a measurement from the retina. The test is non-invasive, uses a weak light, provides immediate quantitative results, takes 3 seconds to perform, and costs approximately 4 cents per measurement. In the first small study, the technology, called Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) Spectroscopy, identified 4 patients who were finally diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease using current methods up to 2 years later. In another study, the DLS measurement was statistically significant with the results from one of the gold standard tests, the PET/amyloid scan. Of note, the PET amyloid test costs $5,000 and is unpleasant to undergo. Imagine if, when you went to your family doctor for a checkup, they weighed you, checked your blood pressure and temperature, and sat you behind a machine for a 3-second measurement that would tell you, before there are any symptoms, that you are at risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease. What would you do if the test were positive? Stop smoking, reduce alcohol consumption, lose weight, control your blood pressure and cholesterol, and exercise your mind? Wouldn’t you? And now, using this device, drug companies would know whether their new drug had a beneficial effect in 6 months, instead of 4 – 5 years. How many more drugs could be tested? That is our goal: to prevent the symptoms of Alzheimer’s so no family would ever have to suffer the ravages of this devastating disease. Jeffrey N. Weiss, M.D., is the former Chief of Retinal Surgery at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, a faculty member of Harvard Medical School, and a Visiting Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He entered college at 16 years of age, and medical school at age 19 on full scholarships. While in medical school, he obtained a degree in Electrical Engineering, Magna Cum Laude with distinction, and graduated from Medical School, Summa Cum Laude, at 23 years of age. Dr. Weiss is the author of more than 100 publications, including 25 books, holds more than 23 U.S. and foreign patents and has been a Reviewer for multiple scholarly journals. He has served as a Visiting Professor, performed surgery, and lectured both nationally and internationally. - Submitted by Jeffrey N. Weiss, M.D. -