This month, a Case Western neurology professor quietly entered the war against the hand that long fed him: Big Pharma. In The Myth of Alzheimer’s: What You Aren’t Being Told About Today’s Most Dreaded Disease, Dr. Peter Whitehouse and his co-author, Daniel George, argue that the “illness” that struck Ronald Reagan and Sugar Ray Robinson is a blanket label for the normal process of brain aging.
Everyone’s brain ages differently, and at its own pace, they say. So why give people false hope by telling them a magical vaccine or pill will stop it?
“All we’re trying to say is, it’s not a specific disease,” George says. “Our brains start aging when we’re in the womb…”
This article appears in Jan 16-22, 2008.