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Pathological Scienceraises Deep Ques- Eossibility That an Undiscovered Virus Tions About Human Perception, Langmuir

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Pathological Scienceraises Deep Ques- Eossibility That an Undiscovered Virus Tions About Human Perception, Langmuir R ,~, " ,- f l'lii v\ . r vw I 'IT "" 1,-.(,1". ~~...: '~;:" MEDICAL DISPATCHES ".. PATHOLOGICALSCIENCE j '- Stanley Prusiner is being awarded a Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking theory about what causes mad-cow disease. But what if he! wrong? BY RICHARD RHODES I N Stockholm later this month, with and RNA. In Prusiner's coinage, the dis- pomp and ceremony, a fifty-five- easeswere caused by a "prion"--a "pro- year-old American neurologist and teinaceous infectious particle." biochemist named Stanley B. Prusiner Yet the very week the Nobel award will receive the 1997 Nobel Prize in was announced two reports in the distin- Physiology or Medicine. The coveted guished British science journal Nature award-a gold medal, a million dollars, and price- . less scientific prestige-is , usually divided among two Slow down. or three candidates; only > \ - . six times in the past. forty ~ 4£~ Luxebiking and walking years has the Medical No- ..~\i . ~ trip~forthe(ulturally bel Assembly of Sweden's ~ ( Jl (unous.Europe and Karolinska Institute seen fit '\' \-: \ ar~undthe World. d . .. =" ,"\ ~\ \ 1-800-678-1147 to awar 1~t? one sC1en~st I, 1I~\:i\)~~ alone. So It IS a sweet VlC- B f . Id tory indeed for Prusiner, utter Ie h . b . .. &R b' w 0 IS erng honore d "J:lor ~ 0 mson h. d. f .,.,... w.,.,..".co ".. IS Iscovery 0 pnon~. ' www.butterfield.com new biological principle of - infection." Prusiner'scontribution to medical science has been sensational. In 1982, he . .. .. posited a new kind of in- OpposmgP~~ners:esearch are~cten.~ts who potnt 1: t . t .. to tantaltztno- htnts that a VtTUS tS tnvolved iec 10USagen , umque rn 0 nature, to explain the unusual character- offered further clues that a virus might istics of a group of rare, transmissible be the carner of T.S.E. infection. Despite spongiform encephalopathies(I:S.E.s~ Prusiner's insistence that the puzzle has diseasesthat kill by damaging the brain been solved,the last word has not ~t been with knots of junk protein and tiny holes. written about the prion's role in causing In the decadethat followed, as he worked such diseases. to prove his theory, a new previously .In fact, by awarding the prize to Pru- unknown T.S.E. emerged in an ~pidemic siner this year the fifty-three Karolinska that panicked millions. Th..<:l285 outb~ scientists who' make up the Medical No- in~ .9f bovine spongiform enceph-::' bel Assembly explicidy took his side in aIOP~S.E.)-. comm~nly kn~-as an ongoing debate-a debate that may m~d:..co~s-=-a~e~~eu 1~ me sla~ have profound consequencesfor future re- ljO~pl~enty-onefer ot nearly two rn:illion anlma1S:-so_fa1=bWIlen -eg:an - mansearch. of RaIf the NobelPettersson, Assembly,-::he deputy clearly chair- un- ~-a-s-wer- pr05aDlV 1ilIe~d bv~t- derstands the stakes,and he has even im- in tainted meat, fears arose 0 a sim ar plied that persistent skepticism .about ~ - ~pid~c rn numan ~ This climate prions had contributed to the spread of , ~gen~CUss-e-a ~cie~t1ficand pu~- B.S.E. to hu~an bein~s. "?u;ing the ',I ~ lic attention on Prusrners controversial whole of the mneteen-elghttes, he told I theory that the infectiousagent for the Reutersin October,"the prion was very ~ ! T.S.E.s is not a virus or a bacterium but a controversial. Acceptance took a while. ~ . protein devoid of the nucleic acids DNA This could have delayed moves. It was ~ , '-~, ' . 55 . , ~e a Doliti~ decision"-in :J}~tai~- then, anthropologists had established Q' b "aboutwhen to take a!;:1;iQD,and by ~n that the mode of infection wasthe Fore v 'l.l U ek 0 he c 0 r""It was too late.". "A;-:-;And ~LUIC Kar 0 li ns ka neu- practlceo. f canru .bali ZIng. ~LUlexr . d ea d r eta - lOll want to ta e It orne Wit h you' . ~ rologist Lars1!;dstrom was dismissive rives.When, beginningin 1985,bovine of skepticswhen he spoke to ilie Times spongiformencephalopathy began deci- "- upon ilie announcement of ilie prize. mating British cattle-it was spreadby "There are still peoplewho don't believe what Gajdusekcalls ilie "high-tech neo- iliat a protein can causeiliese diseases, cannibalism" of feeding cattle protein but we believeit. From our point of view, supplementscooked down from slaugh- thereis no doubt." terhousewaste-scientists invokedGaj- The tone of iliese endorsementsof- dusek'swork among the Fore to warn fends many researchers in 'the field, a skeptical British Government that including the neuropathologist~ B.S.E. might pass to human beings. Manuelidis, a Yale Medical School Prusiner, who studied medicine at ~;6i~~~~§~~~~~;;~~ the University of Pennsylvaniaand has orm ence halo at . turned u spenthis careerin the Universityof Cal- tanta1i~in?:hints of a ~"No doubt?" ifomia system,beg-an working on spongi- s~ecendy, in NeWRaven. "How form encephalopathiesin 1972, after Ask for yourFREE Winter Vacation , couldthere be no doubt?Is thisscience?" one of his patientsdied of a rarehuman Pa~kagesbrochure. Also receive your Aliliou h some of her collea gu es cede TS.E. Creutzfeldt-]akob disease (C.].D.). Winter Getaway Bonus Packag~so Get g. '.. a taste of all the charm and excitement more ground to Prusmer, by her count In the late seventIes, Prusmer focussed of neighbourlyQuebec. o only four of ilie fourteen major T.S.E.- his researchon infectiousproteins, and F 0 fi t J . or In orma Ion, caII t0 II Iiree researchlabs iliat aCtUallywork on the during the last two decadeshis labor~- 1 800 363-7777 (Askfor operator 249) y espouse tory-a well-funded one, at the Um- \" ot \" b O infectiousa gent wholeheartedl 151 our .C 51t e: prion ilieory; nine others considerit un- versity of California at San Francisco \V\,'\v.tourisme.gouv.qc.ca/\,1nter.html likely, and one is undecided. School of Medicine-has published a Transmissible spongiform encepha- hundred and eighty paperson T.S.E.s. ~ rid ..,.." - lopathies--cruel, untreatable,and invari- Prusinerstopped talking to journalistsin t,~"_'il no CANADA Quebec-- ablyfatal maladies-incubate silently for 1986,however, after a skepticalmagazine Heed.mo.e C'o..,,... """ ,.:: ~ years before finding their way to the storyby the science~porter GaryTaubes. ~ brain, where they eventuallysignal their One of the scientistsTaubes men- ""--' presencewiili ataxia and tremors iliat tioned was Patricia Merz, who studied progresswithin weeksor monilis to de- the sheepform of spongiformencepha- mentia,coma, and deaili. Prusinerand a lopathy,called scrapie, with Henry Wis- Zurich colleague,Charles Weissmann, niewski at ilie New York StateInstitute showed iliat infection depends on ilie for BasicResearch in DevelopmentalDis- pn:sencein ilie brain of a protein iliey abilities.In 1978,after four yearsspent called PrP, which all mammals make. teachingherself to use the electronmi- (They did so by knocking out ilie gene croscope,Merz identified litde whis- in mice iliat makesPrP and ilien trying kers-what she calledscrapie-associated to infect iliem; without PrP, ilie mice fibrils (SAF.)-in magnifiedsamples of didn't get sick.) In the courseof Ulfec- infectedmouse and hamsterbrains. The tion, the normal PrP protein changes fibrils showedup only in diseasedsam- cumulatesinto a diseased in damagingform iliat knotstypically called ac- pIes, morenever infective in healiliy the samplescontrols, were,and the --- amyloid plaques.Prusiner later postu- more of iliese fibrils shefound scattered lated a role for a still unidentified "Pro- acrossthe glowing green screenof her tein X" in the deformationof healthyPrP. microscope.Merz and her colleaguesre- Ultimately ilie assaultleads to spongi- ported this discoveryin a German pa- form damage-a stipple of microscopic thologyjournal in 1981.In 1982,Prusi- -- ho~esth~t developsas the brain reacts ner a?nounced that h~ h~d pu:i?ed a (800) 234-1425 to InfeCtiOn. .I protem that tracked With mfectiVlty.A The first human epid~mic of a year later, he reported that the protein WhidbeyIslan~ and Seauk. WA . ~apa VaIlcy 1:' ~L r " SanFrnnC1SCO Mon~rq PenInsula 'T' SE d h k f " d h d .cl . .L. occurre among . t e rore... peo- too tile rorm 0 ro" -s. ape part!". es,. SantaYna VaII ey' 0rang" County'.e or IIun' d e,CO pIe of Papua New Gumea begmmng which he named pnon rods. Citmg in ilie nineteen-twenties.They calledilie Merz'swork, Prusinerallowed that it re- . i1ln kuru An Am . di . d b bli h d" h th Play Blues Uannomca ,.. ess: encan pe atrl.aan malne to e esta sew e er or not 50 3CDs & bookin beautiful boxed set """'- and virologist named Carleton GaJdu- thesefibrils representan elongatedform FromTem} Portnoy of Muddy ~ sek won the 1976 Nobel in Medicine of the prion rods."According to Merz, Wate~& EricClapton baI1dso for proving that kuru was infectiou.~;by antibodytests later performed by her lab- ~fi.rloof~~f-~~~ www.harpmaster.com Leam from the Master! - - ~6' . n-IE NEW YOI\KEi\, DECEMBB\ I, 1997 '. " Fifia IIy... " I k T S E . d . I I . oratory demonstrated t hat Prusmer.s ma e .. .-tamte materIa essm- G 0 LF prion rods and her fibrils were. one and fectious, whereas treatments known to the same. Prusiner has maintained that damage protein did block or reduce .. her data were "unconvincing and in- infections. Prusiner and others also The Money Swing conclusive."Nevertheless, the presence searchedinfected brain samplesfor vi- of these fibrils is now an accepted ral nucleic acid and failed to find it. by Ned Vare laboratorytest ofT.S.E. infection;when Yet, as I emphasizedin my recentbook For the first time, the swin mad-cow disease first apP:a.red i.n "Deadly Feasts,".none of .th~e ~e:i- the heart and soul of le En?land, one of the ~ays BntIsh sc~- ments IS conclusIve: reduCIng Inf~CtIV1ty game IS.
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