Trying to Repair the Irreparable

With the amount of people affected by Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, etc, why aren't drugs to treat these diseases made quicker and more readily available?

There is preventative medicine and there is interventional medicine. Both attempt to cure but they approach illness from different perspectives. Preventative medicine prohibits the physiological abnormality from occurring. Interventional medicine is a little more forgiving of time - it repairs the damage already done and stops the disease from doing any more damage. The question of implementation then becomes contingent upon the time of diagnosis. Whenever the condition is found, interventional medicine is often utilized.

...Unless, the damage is irreparable. Keep in mind that when something in our bodies is damaged, the only way to fix it is to create a more resilient version of those cells. It becomes integral then to remember that each neuron is a "lifetime endowment." Once a neuron undergoes cell death, there isn't any replacement.

And this presents perhaps the most infuriating conundrum for neuroscientists who study neurodegenerative diseases... Interventional medicine cannot reverse effects of neurodegeneration. You might say, stopping the disease is better than nothing. But must I remind you that developing medications necessitates identifying the origin of disease? If we cannot determine how the disease began, we do not completely understand its invasive pathology and therefore, we cannot effectively intervene to halt its progression.

There is a swath of theories and a swath of experimental drugs and it is incredibly unfortunate that they, at their core, are simply speculation. Between vulnerable neurons, variability among patient cases, and the enigmas neuroscience seeks to elucidate, the code waits to be cracked. (246)