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Author Prusiner, Stanley B., 1942- author.

Title Madness and memory : the discovery of prions--a new biological principle of disease / Stanley B. Prusiner
Published New Haven : Yale University Press, [2014]
©2014

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Description 1 online resource (xix, 320 pages) : illustrations
Contents Growing up -- The beginning of an odyssey -- A plethora of theories -- The scrapie race -- Dr. America and the trembling cannibals -- The battle for tenure -- What's in a name? -- Lost in the Pacific fog -- The amyloid story -- Finding the gene -- Jousting with the press -- Deciphering human prion diseases -- What's in a shape? -- Turf battles -- Mad cow and other prion strains -- Stockholm -- The third judgment of Paris -- Epilogue: the quest for therapeutics
Summary In 1997, Stanley B. Prusiner received a Nobel Prize, the world's most prestigious award for achievement in physiology or medicine. That he was the sole recipient of the award for the year was entirely appropriate. His struggle to identify the agent responsible for ravaging the brains of animals suffering from scrapie and mad cow disease, and of humans with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, had been waged largely alone and in some cases in the face of strenuous disagreement. In this book, Prusiner tells the remarkable story of his discovery of prions - infectious proteins that replicate and cause disease but surprisingly contain no genetic material - and reveals how superb and meticulous science is actually practiced with talented teams of researchers who persevere. He recounts the frustrations and rewards of years of research and offers fascinating portraits of his peers as they raced to discover the causes of fatal brain diseases. Prusiner's hypothesis, once considered heresy, now stands as accepted science and the basis for developing diagnoses and eventual cures. He closes with a meditation on the legacy of his discovery: What will it take to cure Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Lou Gehrig's and other devastating diseases of the brain?
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-282) and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Prusiner, Stanley B., 1942-
Prusiner, Stanley B., 1942-
Prusiner, Stanley B., 1942-
Physicians -- United States -- Biography
Physicians -- Biography.
Prions -- History
Prion diseases -- History
Physicians.
Physicians
History, 20th Century
History, 21st Century
Prions -- history
physicians.
MEDICAL -- Biochemistry.
Physicians
Prion diseases
Prions
United States
Genre/Form autobiographies (literary works)
Autobiographies
Biographies
History
Autobiographies.
Biographies.
Autobiographies.
Biographies.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780300199260
0300199260
9781306562478
1306562473