Nutrition and Physical Regeneration

See also: State Science is Bad For Your Health and The Problem With Science
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Thomas Huxley once wrote the oft-quoted adage: "The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."

Yet many a hypothesis is able to withstand the brutal onslaughts of countless ugly facts without budging. Why? From whence has come this ugly and monstrous creature — the immortal hypothesis?

Below is the story of one such hypothesis, the apparent widespread corruption of researchers who have upheld it, and the seeming complicity of Big Government in maintaining it.

The Amyloid Hypothesis

In Alzheimer's disease, there is a protein fragment called "beta-amyloid" that is found to aggregate into plaques in the brain. Beta-amyloid is actually an essential brain protein with positive effects, not in itself toxic.

But there persists a hypothesis that refuses to be slain by countless ugly facts: the amyloid hypothesis, which holds that the production and accumulation of this essential brain protein is the "cause" of Alzheimer's disease. I will spare you the scientific details, as it is beside the point, but for a thorough discussion, see my article, Myth: Cholesterol Causes Alzheimer's Disease.

As it turns out, the persistence of the amyloid hypothesis isn't just a matter of stubbornness. According to a highly regarded researcher in this field, it's a matter of widespread corruption among the most prestigious scientific journals, and the most beloved bedfellow of private interests up to no good: government.

The Economics of Alzheimer's Research

Dr. Alexei Koudinov has been researching lipids (fats) and neuroscience for over ten years.

Dr. Koudinov is the founder and chief editor of The Neurobiology of Lipids, a free-access online scientific journal, completely independent from any private or public institution.

He has also been a lone warrior, tirelessly fighting to expose researchers who fail to disclose their financial conflicts of interest. Repeatedly, he has charged that some of the most prestigious scientific journals are aiding and abetting these researchers, and, according to him, they have again and again responded to his efforts with a blank stare.

Among the complicit journals, Dr. Koudinov lists:

Nature
Science Magazine
Neuron
Cell
Brain Research
The Journal of Clinical Investigation

In Koudinov's "Written Evidence to UK Parliamentary inquiry on Scientific Publications," he tells the story of how a few major players have married science and money, money and government, and whose reckless experiments laid a poor woman dead while they escaped any fallout by strategically selling their stocks.

Among the major players Dr. Koudinov implicates in this charade:

Dr. Dennis Selkoe. Selkoe is the director of Ireland-based Elan Pharmaceuticals, a company involved in Alzheimer's research, and a staunch proponent of the amyloid hypothesis.

Selkoe has written articles, including influential reviews, in Nature and Science and served on the editorial board of Neuron. He has promoted the amyloid hypothesis without ever discussing the demonstrated essential role of beta-amyloid to the brain, and, according to Dr. Koudinov, has never disclosed his financial interests as institutional guidelines require.

Selkoe has also served as a member of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Advisory Council on Aging (NACA).

Dr. Dale Shenk. Shenk is a scientist also working for Elan Pharmaceuticals. He was also the 2001 recipient of the prestigious Potomkin Prize from the American Academy of Neurology. You can decide later whether those two facts are related. Needless to say, Dr. Koudinov points out that his publications have failed to reveal his financial interests.

Dr. Howard Weiner. Weiner is Selkoe's business partner and has co-authored several influential articles with him. Articles which, according to the good Doc, are likewise lacking disclosure of financial interests.

Dr. Floyd Bloom. Dr. Floyd Bloom is the founder and CEO of Neurome, Inc., which has a $4 million business deal with Selkoe's company, Elan. As board chairman of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which publishes Science Magazine, Bloom wrote a Presidential address and a call to "reform U.S. health care," that were both distributed free by Science, yet, Science apparently failed to disclose his financial interests.

Take the money and run

In 2001, DR. Koudinov notes that Selkoe's research group was studying a proposed beta-amyloid vaccine that should supposedly have improved cognitive function in Alzheimer's patients. In one unfortunate woman, who functioned as a test-run before running an FDA-sanctioned international phase 2 study, the vaccine initially appeared to help, but its benefits were quickly erased.

In reaction, within days Selkoe sold 20,000 shares in Elan for nearly $1 million. Dr. Koudinov says other insiders also sold.

According to Dr. Koudinov, despite these warnings and the clear indication that Selkoe saw Elan going downhill, the FDA study following this incident went ahead! As apparently expected, the FDA refused to allow the drug on the market after this study. Elan's stocks plummeted from about $50 a share to $2 a share.

"Lucky" for Dr. Selkoe, as Dr. Koudinov points out, he'd already taken the money and run.
Dr. Selkoe, the director of Elan Pharmaceuticals, chaired the board of AAN, the sponsor of the Potomkin award, from 1999 through 2001. In 2001, the Potomkin award was given to Dr. Dale Shenk, an Elan scientist. As you could have guessed by now, as Dr. Koudinov clearly points out, neither Dr. Selkoe nor the AAN bothered to disclose Selkoe's quite obvious conflict of interest.

If Dr. Koudinov’s charges are true, then we have some serious shenanigans and tragic consequences involved here.

It would mean that Selkoe, Shenk, Weiner and Bloom have all been major proponents of the amyloid hypothesis, all have financial conflicts of interest that each of them have failed to disclose, and that a number of institutions and scientific journals have likewise followed suit, snubbing off Dr. Koudinov's tireless effort to expose these conflicts of interest.

It would mean that the private interests of pharmaceutical companies and their employees, founders, and directors have been exposed by Dr. Koudinov to be corrupting the scientific method itself.

An ugly fact is supposed to slay a beautiful hypothesis.

Yet apparently even experimentally induced human death is not an ugly enough fact to slay the amyloid hypothesis.

The Politics of Alzheimer's Research

Where there is an institution with the power to tax, there follows a private interest to use it for its own benefit.

Thus, so goes the story of the amyloid hypothesis.

After World War II, the peer-review system took hold, where government grants were supposed to promote science, and institutions (or, rather, bureaucracies) of peer-review would decide how to dish out the dough.

As Gilbert Ling points out in his critique of the peer-review system, the idea was based on the false notion that scientific progress is made in smooth, continuous, and small increments. Later studies of scientific progress refuted this misconception, showing that scientific progress grows in sporadic bursts.

And as history shows, scientific revolutions have been the domain of private individuals financing their own pursuits.

But who is to man these "public" government grant institutions? Is there a "public" who can sit on the committee? No. There are only humans. And humans are, by definition, private interests. Thus there in fact can never be such a thing as a "public" grant institution.

So who is it that mans these committees?

Dr. Selkoe served on the NIH and NACA, both public institutions.

Dr. Weiner served as member of the FDA's Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee.

Dr. Bloom was the senior author of a major Proceeding of the National Academy of the Sciences report concerning Alzheimer's and over-emphasizing the amyloid hypothesis (conflict of interest undisclosed, of course).

And just what effect, pray tell, does it have for biased supporters of a lifeless hypothesis with their own financial interests in it to be sitting on the boards that determine who gets funded?

One scientist wrote to Dr. Koudinov:

I agree whole-heartedly with your letter to Science concerning Alzheimer's disease and the amyloid beta protein. It is amazing how this field has been led down the "amyloid hypothesis" trail to the exclusion of other viable hypotheses. If you don't go along with the amyloid dogma, you have difficulty publishing and extreme difficulty being funded. The anti-intellectual, anti-science mentality displayed by many in this field has slowed progress to a crawl. This is a shame.

Thus, it would appear even those without a financial interest are pressured to the point where the success of their career is at stake if they don't support a hypothesis. It appears even researchers who have findings contrary to the amyloid hypothesis will sugar up the abstract, or summary, of their study to give lip service to the amyloid hypothesis.

I point out numerous cases of this in Part II of my article, Myth: Cholesterol Causes Alzheimer's.

And since doctors and journalists tend to read only abstracts, or reviews that cite studies, the authors of which may have only read the abstract, these pieces of lip-service to the amyloid hypothesis (or the hypothesis du jour), not the actual findings of the study, are what trickle down to consumers of health information, whether in the newspaper, on television, or in the doctor's office.

Thus, what good is it to support a large quantity of research, if the institutions that, through the tax power of the government, make this funding available, are chaired by biased and financially interested humans who funnel the greater portion of these dollars into the toilet of an invalid hypothesis?

Needless to say, that toilet leads directly into a shared septic system where many a dollar that has passed through the hands of Uncle Sam winds up.

In the end, scientific principles, just like the sand upon which the amyloid hypothesis has been built, blow away in the wind.

Like our money, the government grinch has also stolen science.
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Chris Masterjohn is the editor of Cholesterol-and-Health.com, a website devoted to extolling the benefits of cholesterol.

Copyright © 2005 warongoodfood.com