Health Impact News Editor Comments:

The news regarding coconut oil’s amazing ability to treat, and sometimes reverse, the effects of Alzheimer’s has been big news since 2008, when a story in Florida was published about Dr. Mary Newport, and her husband Steve. Dr. Newport’s original study on her husband, and the remarkable results they saw from consuming coconut oil in reversing his Alzheimer’s, can be read here: What if There was a Cure for Alzheimer’s and No One Knew it?

But Dr. Newport’s efforts to get the medical community to take notice and conduct trials has been met with not simply a lack of interest, but even some hostility, as she tried to present her case study at the annual conference of the Alzheimer’s Association in 2007. The group refused to give her a booth, and when she attended as an attendee to hand out her study, the organization assigned a security guard to follow her around.

The Alzheimer’s Association, as a non-profit group, has revenues of over $230 million per year through donations and tax-funded government grants. But all that money apparently can only be spent on drug research to benefit pharmaceutical products, which have a very poor track record in developing Alzheimer’s drugs. Most of the drugs never make it to market because they fail drug trials, and last year a federal judge ruled that a case against Harvard Medical School and its teaching hospitals, regarding fraudulent research using public funds for Alzheimer’s disease, was to proceed. (Story here.) Alzheimer’s Disease is growing and now reportedly affects over 5 million people in the U.S, representing a potential multi-billion dollar market for pharmaceutical companies. With the poor results of drugs, last year a U.S. tax-payer funded study began in Colombia for a new Alzheimer’s vaccine.

As more and more testimonials regarding how effective coconut oil is in reversing Alzheimer’s in some people continue to go viral on the Internet, the Alzheimer’s Association finally had to publicly address the issue last year. Predictably, they discouraged people from using it, stating that there was “no scientific basis” for all the claims being made. (See: Alzheimer’s Association Warns Against Coconut Oil – Member Replies “Coconut Oil Gave us our Father Back!”)

Finally, the University of South Florida’s Health Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute has decided to research coconut oil and Alzheimer’s. They have a study currently in progress where they enrolled 65 individuals with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s to measure the effects of coconut oil, versus a placebo, on the disease. The funding reportedly came from a private foundation, as there is obviously no interest in researching this inside the medical system, with its billions of dollars in revenue and government funds to develop drugs that can be patented.

“The pharmaceutical industry is in this — of course to make money for their companies, and of course they want to help people theoretically — but at the end of the day it is about dollars and cents, and so money gets invested in things that are new or patentable rather than things that are sitting on the shelf already,” said Amanda Smith, Medical Director of USF’s Health Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute in Tampa Florida. She told CTV News in Canada: “There is no one who really stands to benefit from this except the patients. For us that is enough, that is our mission, that is who we want to help.”