Brain Trust: The Hidden Connection Between Mad Cow and Misdiagnosed Alzheimer's Disease [Hardcover]

Colm A. Kelleher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 19, 2004

On December 23, 2003 authorities announced that the first case of Mad Cow Disease in the United States had been found in a dairy cow in Mabton, Washington. The admission, though downplayed, hides a frightening reality. For thirty years, a covert sampling operation has been conducted on North American cattle to reveal how far the deadly prions that are thought to cause Mad Cow Disease have spread thought the nation's livestock. These efforts may be too late: BRAIN TRUST warns of an impending public health catastrophe as the American food supply, and other countries to which they export, becomes progressively more contaminated. Although statistics argue that only one in a million people become affected with the human version of Mad Cow Disease, research on many postmortem brains of Alzheimer's patients provide questionable data: the classic ravaged pathology of human Mad Cow Disease. Currently, there are millions of people worldwide who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and the numbers are growing. How many of those are related to Mad Cow? Until now, this complex story has remained untold - no one has been able to connect the dots. With BRIAN TRUST, Colm Kelleher reveals the frightening health implications for the first time.

Editorial Reviews

Review

John L. Peterson, President, The Arlington Institute This well-documented, accessible tale is the wake-up call that could literally save your life. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

From the Inside Flap

"Dr. Kelleher uses forensic medicine to explore one of the most complicated medical enigmas of the past 100 years and wrests from it some frightening conclusions. A remarkable and very important book." -- Christopher Green, M.D., Ph.D. Fellow, Neuroimaging Harper University Hospital, Wayne State School of Medicine

"Anyone who thinks the meat on their plate is safe is living in a fantasy world. When the public sees this book, there will be hell to pay." -- George Knapp, Emmy Award-winning journalist

"This well-documented, accessible tale is the wake-up call that could literally save your life." -- John L. Peterson, President, The Arlington Institute

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Paraview Pocket Books (October 19, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743499352
• ISBN-13: 978-0743499354
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #264,462 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #24 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Personal Health > Stress > Mind-Body Connection

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As a neurologist, I found it frightening, November 21, 2004

By 

Stephen Wong (Pennsylvania, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brain Trust: The Hidden Connection Between Mad Cow and Misdiagnosed Alzheimer's Disease (Hardcover)

As a trained neurologist working at a school of medicine, I thought I had a fairly good understanding of BSE and its human counterpart, nvCJD. But clinical knowledge is only one piece of the puzzle.

Drawing upon epidemiologic, forensic, political, medical, scientific, and historical sources, the author has provided a truly chilling account of the importation of prion disease samples from the small cannabalistic Fore tribe in New Guinea for U.S. animal experimentation in the 1950's and '60's, with credible links to the current epidemic of animal prion disease in North America (CWD or chronic wasting disease, TME or transmissible mink encephalopathy, and BSE), as well as the current epidemic of Alzheimer's disease in developed countries (i.e., those eating mass-produced livestock). The author also speculates that the cattle mutiliations in North America in the past few decades may have been programs designed for the surveillance of prions within the nation's food supply.

Some disturbing points made in the book are:

1) 5 - 13% of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) cases that go to autopsy at university medical centers is actually misdiagnosed sporadic CJD (ref: Manuelidis, J. Pathology 1989), alarming since AD is so common and on the rise.
2) BSE, when transmitted to mice, cause neuropathological findings of nvCJD, but surprisingly, may also cause changes indistinguishable from sporadic CJD (ref: Collinge, EMBO Journal 2002 & Science 11/04)... in combination with the above, the implication is that a significant proportion of clinical AD may be due to BSE.
3) CWD (chronic wasting disease), a prion disease of wild animals such as deer and elk, has been spreading rapidly within the past few decades in North America.
4) If infected animals graze on a pasture, that pasture remains infectious to new animals for years... meaning that the disease will be difficult to contain, to say the least.
5) The "species barrier" is weaker than it sounds, i.e., most mammals and birds can contract it from each other.

Working in a complex medical system, it's all too familiar to me the fact that families do not pursue post-mortems, diagnoses are not considered, and tests are never 100% reliable. The extra pecautions and higher risk are hindrances to autopsying a patient clinically diagnosed with CJD. Knowing the foibles of human nature, it is almost certain that enormous economic incentives for cattle ranchers and various government agencies have contributed to underreporting and underestimation the potential severity of the problem... which is a shame given that we have the benefit of having observed the same public health fiasco in the UK.

It is common dogma that sporadic CJD is not related to nvCJD or BSE, but that statement may be mistaken in light of more current research such as the type cited in the book. I hope that if awareness is promoted via reading this book, suspicion and surveillance for the disease among veterinarians and physicians will increase, and a more accurate picture of the situation will be revealed.

As for the book itself, it appears well-researched with references appearing in a detailed appendix. The strength of the work is how the seamless argument is woven together in a highly readable fashion, making it accessible to all. It reads like a first-rate thriller and is hard to put down. I read it in two sittings over a weekend.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yikes! This is Frightening, January 4, 2005

By 

D. Buxman "A Seeker of Truth" (Pueblo, CO United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brain Trust: The Hidden Connection Between Mad Cow and Misdiagnosed Alzheimer's Disease (Hardcover)

This book has caused me to re-examine my thinking about eating non-organic meat. First of all, let me state that I am not a vegetarian and, having been raised on a farm, have always been a beef eater. However, this book's analysis of the possiblity of a prion-tainted meat supply has caused me to explore other options to store purchased meat. While much of the evidence is anectdotal, it is compelling nonetheless. The author looks at brain wasting diseases among humans in New Guinea, sheep and cattle in Britain and deer and elk in America. He demonstrates a potential link between Mad Cow-like illnesses and the increase in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease in the United States, and has an interesting theory on outbreaks of cattle mutilations. Given the fact that these brain wasting diseases can take years to manifest themselves and that we are relying on a testing scheme by the USDA that covers less than one percent of the beef supply, it seems prudent to look for alternatives and press for more safeguards. The author points out that by turning herbivore cattle into cannibals by feeding them rendered beef byproducts as a low cost protein source, we may be responsible for an epidemic of Biblical proportions. I couldn't put this book down.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read!, November 17, 2004

By 

C. Wong "www.organicfamilymagazine.com" (Connecticut, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brain Trust: The Hidden Connection Between Mad Cow and Misdiagnosed Alzheimer's Disease (Hardcover)

Brain Trust has all the makings of a good horror novel. There are many deaths, cover-ups and even cannibalism. The only problem is that it was NOT a work of fiction by Stephen King. It is the horror story of how Mad Cow disease came to be discovered. This terrifying tale begins with researchers in Papua New Guinea studying the Fore people and the illness they were succumbing to called Kuru.

The story unfolds over five decades and reveals the scary details of the spreading disease and the stark reality of how unsafe our food supply is. I distinctly remember the first time I heard about prions and it scared me terribly with good reason. Prions are not a virus or bacteria, but a protein with an odd shape that can apparently multiply and are zoonotic (passed between species).

This book covers the history of how the various forms of prion disease (scrapie in sheep, chronic wasting disease in wildlife like deer, bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cows, and Creuztfeldt-Jakob disease in humans) came to be known. Included are the stories of the researchers, what is known to this point, and how it is spread including the details of the outbreak in England. We would be wise to heed to warnings of this book, in light of the recent confirmed case of mad cow in the U.S. The author also makes the link between misdiagnosed Alzheimer's disease and Creuztfeldt-Jakob disease.

This book beautifully written and reads like a thrilling mystery, but is much more scary because it is real. I commend the Dr. Kelleher for his research on this topic and providing citizens with this overview. This is a must read for anyone concerned about the politics and safety of food.

C.J. Wong, M.S.(Biology), M.S. (Lib. Info. Sci.)
Editor, Organic Family Magazine