Opinion: How the ‘amyloid mafia’ took over Alzheimer’s research
In this adapted excerpt from his new book “Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s,” Charles Piller looks how the amyloid hypothesis took over Alzheimer’s research.
In November 2022, Dennis Selkoe, a Harvard professor of neurologic diseases and among the most celebrated and prolific Alzheimer’s researchers, chastised me over lunch.
I had just broken a story in Science about the horrific death of a volunteer in a trial of lecanemab, a much-anticipated new drug to treat Alzheimer’s by flushing certain dangerous substances from the brain. The woman suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage. A pathologist said it was like “her brain exploded.”
