- Person
- Stanley Prusiner
- Lived
- b. 1942
- Field
- Neurology
- From
- American
The story
Scientific discoveries are usually reported in dry technical papers. Stanley Prusiner chose also to tell the human story behind his. In 2014 Yale University Press published his memoir, Madness and Memory: The Discovery of Prions, a New Biological Principle of Disease.
The book begins with his family history: Eastern European Jewish immigrants who moved west across America in search of work, and a boyhood in Des Moines and Cincinnati. It follows him to the University of Pennsylvania, where mentors such as Sidney Wolfson and Britton Chance drew him into research, and to the National Institutes of Health, where he learned how to purify proteins, a skill that would prove crucial.
At the heart of the book is September 1972, when, as a young neurology resident at the University of California, San Francisco, he cared for a woman dying of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Puzzled that a supposed viral infection produced no fever or immune response, he became determined to find the cause. The memoir describes the years of experiments with scrapie in hamsters and mice, the excitement of each breakthrough, and the fierce opposition his ideas provoked.
Reviewers praised its candour. Writing in the Pennsylvania Gazette, the physician and ethicist Jason Karlawish said Prusiner avoided self-promotion and showed scientists as passionate and ambitious people rather than dull, unemotional ones, and he suggested the book should be part of the training of young scientists. One theme he highlighted was Prusiner's insistence that a scientist's most important trait is intellectual honesty, even when the truth is less hopeful than funders and the public might like.
In his Nobel autobiography, Prusiner reflected that it is reasonable for scientists to be sceptical of ideas that do not fit, but that the best science often comes from such results. His memoir offers readers an inside view of how a once-controversial idea became accepted biology.
Why it matters
By sharing his story, Prusiner helps students and the public understand how science advances through evidence, debate and persistence.
About Stanley Prusiner
Neurologist who discovered prions, infectious proteins with no DNA or RNA, behind mad cow and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, winning the 1997 Nobel Prize for a once-derided idea.
More about Stanley Prusiner
- Stanley Prusiner showed prion disease can be inheritedStanley Prusiner's group showed that a mutation in the prion gene causes inherited brain disease, and reproduced the illness in genetically engineered mice.
- Stanley Prusiner founded an institute for brain diseasesIn 1999 Stanley Prusiner founded the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of California, San Francisco, to study illnesses caused by misfolded proteins.
- Stanley Prusiner found the prion gene in our own DNAIn 1984 Stanley Prusiner's team showed that the gene for the prion protein is found in all animals tested, including humans, a startling result that reshaped the understanding of brain disease.
- Stanley Prusiner discovered prions, a new kind of infectionIn 1982 Stanley Prusiner identified prions, infectious proteins with no DNA or RNA, an idea met with scepticism that won him the 1997 Nobel Prize.
- Stanley Prusiner's prions opened new routes to dementiaThe Nobel Assembly said Stanley Prusiner's discovery of prions could furnish the basis for understanding other dementias such as Alzheimer's disease and for developing new treatments.
- Stanley Prusiner revealed why prions are so hard to destroyStanley Prusiner's work showed that the disease-causing prion protein is extraordinarily stable, resisting enzymes, solvents and temperatures above 100°C, explaining why prions are so hard to kill.
Sources
- Stanley B. Prusiner Wikipedia
- Stanley B. Prusiner, Biographical NobelPrize.org
- Stalking the Elusive Prion The Pennsylvania Gazette
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.