Free Radicals - Michael Brooks [125]
p. 77 ‘Patients know they are to die’: D. Gajdusek, ‘Kuru: Clinical, Pathological and Epidemiological Study of an Acute Progressive Degenerative Disease of the Central Nervous System Among Natives of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea’, American Journal of Medicine, vol. 26, p. 442 (1959).
p. 77 ‘[T]hey know damn well that we do nothing for the disease …’: The letters are quoted in C. Spark, ‘Learning from the Locals: Gajdusek, Kuru and Cross-Cultural Interaction in Papua New Guinea, Health and History, vol. 7, p. 80 (2005).
p. 78 Gajdusek’s breakthrough paper was published in 1966: D. Gajdusek et al., ‘Experimental Transmission of a Kuru-like Syndrome in Chimpanzees’, Nature, vol. 209, p. 794 (1966).
p. 78 That result was published in 1968: C.J. Gibbs et al., ‘Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease (Subacute Spongiform Encephalopathy): Transmission to the Chimpanzee’, Science, vo. 161, p. 388 (1968).
p. 78 one of his patients was suffering a slow and agonising death: Prusiner describes his entrance into the field in S. Prusiner, ‘The Prion Diseases’, Scientific American, vol. 272, p. 48 (1995), available at www.mad-cow.org/~tom/prionSP.html
p. 79 he came across what he later called an ‘astonishing’ report: T. Alper et al., ‘Does the Agent of Scrapie Replicate Without Nucleic Acid?’, Nature, vol. 214, p. 764 (1967).
p. 80 The English mathematician John Stanley Griffith had come up with an answer: J. Griffith, ‘Self-Replication and Scrapie’, Nature, vol. 215, p. 1043 (1967).
p. 81 Equipped with what he terms ‘the optimism of youth’ and a ‘cocky’ nature: Prusiner describes his young self as ‘cocky’ in G. Taubes, ‘Nobel Gas: Sure, Stanley Prusiner Deserves a Prize – for His Persistence, Not for His Prions’, Slate, 11 October 1997, available at http://www.slate.com/id/2096/
p. 81 Prusiner made the claim in a paper published in the journal Science: S. Prusiner, ‘Novel Proteinaceous Infectious Particles Cause Scrapie’, Science, vol. 216, p. 136 (1982).
p. 81 ‘three decades of investigation have yielded no direct experimental proof’: S. Supattapone, ‘What Makes a Prion Infectious?’, Science, vol. 327, p. 1091 (2010).
p. 81 ‘At every crossroads on the road that leads to the future …’: the quote is borrowed from Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck.
p. 82 represents ‘a triumph of the scientific process over prejudice’: S. Prusiner, Prion Biology and Diseases (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1999), p. 126.
p. 82 they ‘wanted to stick close to the evidence’: Interview by Carol Reeves, in ‘“I Knew There Was Something Wrong with That Paper”: Scientific Rhetorical Styles and Scientific Misunderstandings’, Technical Communication Quarterly, vol. 14(3), p. 267 (2005). This is an extraordinary paper, well worth reading, and is studied in more depth later in this chapter. It is available at sullivanfiles.net/science_rhetoric/style/reeves_something_wrong.pdf
p. 82 Richard Kimberlin of the Animal Research Centre in Edinburgh countered it in Nature: R. Kimberlin, ‘Scrapie Agent: Prions or Virinos?’ Nature, vol. 297, p. 107 (1982).
p. 83 ‘From our point of view, there is no doubt.’: L. Altman, ‘U.S. Scientist Wins Nobel for Controversial Work’, New York Times, 7 October 1997.
p. 83 the result could be ‘tragic’: Chesebro’s press release is reported in R. Rhodes, ‘Pathological Science’, New Yorker, 1 December 1997, available at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/physics/brau/Retirement/Prusiner%20reading/Pathologicalscience.pdf
p. 83 Laura Manuelidis made a similar point: G. Kolata, ‘Eye on the Nobel; They Should Give a Prize for Ambition’, New York Times, 12 October 1997. The ‘cold fusion of infectious diseases’ quote is from the same source.
p. 84 ‘Clearly, we are in the very early stages of exploration …’: B. Chesebro, ‘BSE and Prions: Uncertainties About the Agent’, Science, vol. 279, p. 42 (1998).
p.