Free Radicals - Michael Brooks [127]
p. 95 Scientists are highly resistant to new scientific ideas: Numerous historical examples can be found in B. Barber, ‘Resistance by Scientists to Scientific Discovery’, Science, vol. 134, p. 596 (1961).
p. 95 ‘New ideas need the more time for gaining general assent …’: H. Helmholtz, ‘The Modern Development of Faraday’s Conception of Electricity’, Faraday Lecture, delivered before the Fellows of the Chemical Society, London, 5 April 1881. Text available at http://www. chemteam.info/Chem-History/Helmholtz-1881.html
p. 95 ‘none of my professors … had any understanding for its contents’: M. Planck, Scientific Autobiography, translated by F. Gaynor (Philosophical Library, 1968), p. 19.
p. 96 kept science in China and the Far East from leading the world: M. Brooks, ‘The Spark Rises in the East’, New Statesman, 16 August 2010, available at http://www.newstatesman.com/asia/2010/08/china-research-chinese-science
p. 96 Today, an estimated 35 million people worldwide have dementia: figures available at http://www.alz.co.uk/media/nr100921.html
p. 97 knock out the ability of mice to make prion proteins: C. Le Pichon, ‘Olfactory Behavior and Physiology Are Disrupted in Prion Protein Knockout Mice’, Nature Neuroscience, vol. 12, p. 60 (2008).
p. 97 may not generate new neurons at quite the normal rate: C.C. Zhang et al., ‘Prion Protein Is Expressed on Long-Term Repopulating Hematopoietic Stem Cells and Is Important for Their Self-Renewal’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 103, p. 2184 (2006).
p. 97 the absence of prion proteins seems to make long-term memory more robust: E. Parkin et al., ‘Cellular Prion Protein Regulates β-Secretase Cleavage of the Alzheimer’s Amyloid Precursor Protein’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, p. 11062 (2007). It is worth noting that this paper was edited by Stanley Prusiner prior to publication: http://www.pnas.org/content/104/26/11062. The questionable scientific ethics behind some papers in the Proceedings are briefly discussed in Chapter 6.
p. 97 When Alois Alzheimer first presented his new disease: N. Zilka and M. Novak, ‘The Tangled Story of Alois Alzheimer’, Bratisl Lek Listy, vol. 107, p. 343 (2006), available at http://www.bmj.sk/2006/107910–02.pdf
p. 97 In 2009, researchers were excited to discover: H. Ledford, ‘“Harmless” Prion Protein Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease’, Nature News Service, 25 February 2009, http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090225/full/news.2009.121.html
p. 97 human brain cells engineered to make more prion proteins: E. Parkin et al., ‘Cellular Prion Protein Regulates β-Secretase Cleavage of the Alzheimer’s Amyloid Precursor Protein’.
p. 98 Misfolding is not uncommon in proteins: For a useful essay on protein folding, see W.A. Thomasson, ‘Unraveling the Mystery of Protein Folding’, http://iop.vast.ac.vn/theor/conferences/smp/1st/kaminuma/UnravelingtheMysteryofProteinFolding/protein.html
p. 98 they involve prion proteins that have somehow folded up differently to normal: A. Aguzzi, ‘Beyond the Prion Principle’, Nature, vol. 459, p. 924 (2009).
p. 99 Normal mice remained perfectly healthy: This experiment is discussed in J. Collinge, ‘A General Model of Prion Strains and Their Pathogenicity’, Science, vol. 318, p. 930 (2007).
p. 99 There is certainly still room for the involvement of a nucleic acid element: For a contrarian view on Prusiner, see L. Maneulidis, ‘Transmissible Encephalopathy Agents: Virulence, Geography and Clockwork’, Virulence, vol. 1, p. 1 (2010).
CHAPTER 4
p. 101 eight young men who had each been paid £2,330: there were global press reports at the time. For a later analysis, see e.g. D. Leppard, ‘Elephant Man Drug Victims Told to Expect Early Death’, Times, 30 July 2006, available at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article694634.ece; and S. Hattenstone, ‘“Everybody Thought We Were Toxic Waste”’, Guardian, 17 February 2007, available at http://www. guardian.co.uk/society/2007/feb/17/health.lifeandhealth. A digest is