Tag: #Alzheimers

The family of He-Man’s creator is looking for help

TMZ was the first to report this really tragic news yesterday.

Roger Sweet — the toy designer who created the He-Man character for He-Man and the Masters of the Universe in the 1980s — is suffering from dementia, and according to his wife, he’s unable to afford the necessary care.

Marlene Sweet, who has been married to Roger for nearly 40 years, launched a GoFundMe to help with the $10,200-a-month bill for Roger’s memory care facility. According to reports, he took a pretty bad fall at the age of 91, and dementia was already complicating the situation.

Anyone who has been connected to this disease or has seen it in their own family knows the pain, the tribulation, and the long wind of dementia blowing through the minds of people with Alzheimer’s. It’s very unfortunate. Very sad. And in this case, it feels even sadder because of the amount of joy his creation of He-Man brought to a few generations of people.

This is on the Go Fund Me:

My husband, Roger Sweet, is the creator of HE-MAN and MASTERS of the UNIVERSE. He was a toy designer at Mattel for over 15 years. Roger designed and named the original He-Man character, and worked for years with other designers to create all the other characters and playsets that enthralled kids for so many years – and still do today!

Over the years Roger was invited to and attended multiple COMICON conventions. He always loved talking about HE-MAN and MASTERS with all the fans! I was able to accompany him to several, and it was fun to see him interacting with HE-MAN fans.

We have been married for nearly 40 years. When we got married, the designers in the HE-MAN group “built” us a plaster wedding cake, with “HE-MAN TAKES MARLENE FOR HIS BRIDE” written on the side, and HE-MAN dressed for a wedding (with his bride holding all the weapons) for the cake topper! Very clever guys!!!

Roger is now nearly 91 years old and sadly has dementia. His illness has continued to progress, and I have done all I can to take care of his needs at home. He recently went for a walk and returned much later than usual and very tired. I discovered terrible bruising on his side and much disorientation, and when asked what happened he did not recall falling and getting this injury. The doctor sent him to the ER, and after 4 hours of tests they discovered he had two brain bleeds along with the massive bruising on his side. He was admitted to the ICU where he stayed for 3 days, then 4 more days in the main hospital, sleeping most of the time and continuing to be very disoriented, along with refusing to stay put and trying to go walking about. The doctors consider him a high risk for falls and say he must use a walker, considering the dementia and brain bleeds, but he says he does not need it and continues to walk around in his confused state.

They decided he must live in a Memory care facility, where he can be monitored and safe. He is now at our chosen care facility and is settling in. He has only been there a few days and his mental decline is sadly continuing. It is devastating to see this happening. Unfortunately these care facilities are not covered by Medicare, and the cost for a patient in his condition is $10,200 a month, well above our monthly income.

So I am reaching out to all the HE-MAN fans for help with these bills. Any donation will be greatly appreciated and will ease the burden of this new expense.

Sweet’s design work helped shape an entire era of toys and animation that still resonates with fans today.
The He-Man fan base is pretty strong. Perhaps they’ll step up and assist in this case because of the amount of joy this man brought into their lives.

The only thing we can do right now is hope and pray that the family finds some relief — and some peace — during what has to be an incredibly difficult time.

February 25, 2026
Guardian reports that critical elements for leading Alzheimer’s study was potentially fraudulent!

THERE IS A SPECIAL PLACE IN HELL FOR PEOPLE IF TRUE: Critical elements of leading Alzheimer’s study possibly fraudulent

The UK GUARDIAN is reporting:

Critical elements of one of the most cited pieces of Alzheimer’s disease research in the last two decades may have been purposely manipulated, according to a report in Science.
Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia globally, according to the World Health Organization. The highly influential paper, which was published in Nature in 2006, has helped guide billions of dollars in US federal government research into Alzheimer’s, according to Science.
The study, which looked at cognitive decline in mice, proposed that a specific amyloid protein may be responsible for cognitive decline. The hypothesis has since dominated the field, and researchers have worked for years to understand the mechanism by which such proteins may lead to decline.

But it goes on..

But a neuroscientist in Tennessee, Vanderbilt University professor Matthew Schrag, said in a Science article that he and other reviewers have identified as many as 10 papers on the protein that deserve deeper scrutiny. The report also cited other prominent researchers who have had difficulty replicating results of the studies on the specific proteins.
“I focus on what we can see in the published images, and describe them as red flags, not final conclusions,” he told Science, when revealing his role as a whistleblower. “The data should speak for itself.”
The heart of the matter is whether images in multiple papers were manipulated to better support a hypothesis, with the work of researcher Sylvain Lesné under particular examination. Lesné, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota, is now under investigation by the university.
His co-author on several papers is Dr Karen Ashe, also a University of Minnesota researcher and one of the most prominent Alzheimer’s researchers in the country. She described the potential manipulation of images as “devastating,” to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, but criticized the idea that her research into amyloid proteins singularly guided federal and drug company spending.

You can read the full story on the GUARDIAN..

There is a special place in hell for people who would be purposely in manipulation. Mistakes will happen. Sometimes a hypothesis will prove wrong–but it is a working guess..

However deliberant fraud in the face of a disease that wastes people away to an awful state? Unforgivable if true..

There was a certain scene from the Stephen King made for TV adaptation of STORM OF THE CENTURY.. IN one particular scene, Andre Linoge takes on the form of someone’s mom who was wasting away in a nursing home. She tells her son that he never came to visit her or cared for her before she died.. And she tells him hell is repetition. And when he got to hell his eyes would be eaten over, and over, and over again.

Perhaps that is the only comforting thing that could be said in the wake of this news..

July 25, 2022
Researchers claim lowering blood pressure could help prevent dementia

A new study offers a glimpse into preventative attention one should give blood pressure..

Drastically lowering blood pressure may help protect memory and thinking skills later in life, researchers reported Monday — the first hopeful sign that it’s possible to lower rates of mental decline.

MORE..

The large blood pressure study looked at more than 9,000 people over the age of 50 years old found that those who lowered their blood pressure to 120 — the top number, or systolic blood pressure — were 19 percent less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment, the loss of memory and brain processing power that usually precedes Alzheimer’s disease. The results of the study, called Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial, or SPRINT, were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

January 28, 2019