Caroline Schnakers, who carried out the research with Laureys, told CNN that one probable reason for the high rate of misdiagnosis is that doctors often base their diagnosis on observations of a patient's behavior, rather than assessing patients using standardized tests.
In a clinical trial conducted in Russia, dimebon improved the ability of patients with Alzheimer's disease on a standardized test used to measure disease severity.
Yet standing in the way of this boundless potential is an Obama administration whose entire approach to health reform revolves around the idea that patients are not unique and that bureaucrats can develop standardized treatments that will apply to almost everybody with a given condition.
Under highly centralized national health care, the government inevitably makes cost-minded judgments about what types of care are "best" for society at large, and the standardized treatments it prescribes inevitably steal life-saving options from individual patients.