Book Review: By Choice & By Chance

 A Molecule Away from Madness: Tales of the Hijacked Brain
by Sara Manning Peskin. W.W. Norton 214 pp. $25.95

Even if you’ve never had any training in science, or know what you know of science through casual exposure in school or newspapers, you must have wondered, “How did they discover what they discovered?”

Sara Manning Peskin knows how. And she tells what she knows in her new, and (deservedly highly praised book, “A Molecule Away from Madness.”

Be forewarned. It’s complicated. For example, sometimes someone gets an idea that a disease ravaging a group of people isn’t being helped by doctors and other caregivers doing all they can. Medicine (i.e., drugs) aren’t working either. Nutrition (including change of diet and dietary supplements) are at best palliative. Ditto for alternative hands-on treatments (acupuncture, chiropractory, massage.)

“Cognitive neurology,” says Dr. Peskin, is the answer.

Everything bad, ranging from annoyances to life-threatening emergencies, can be traced to molecules we have only partly discovered. And they have been partly discovered for hundreds of years now, though the pace and quantity of such discoveries has increased with the growth of new tools for finding the culprits and conquerors.

Dr. Peskin takes us through such once mysterious and thought to be incurable afflictions as cholera, dementia, neuritis, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and, of course, Covid.

The eras and circumstances of each were, and are, vastly different. But one thing they have in common – one immensely encouraging thing – is that somebody or somebodies somewhere thought they could be cured. 

“A Molecule Away from Madness” to use the overused critical term for non-fiction that here applies, “reads like a novel.” Indeed, someone named Jeremy is thanked in the books’ dedication, for having taught Dr. Peskin “to tell a story.”

Those non-scientists reading this book will see how well he succeeded.

Take, for example, the tale of Alzheimer’s. First observed and chronicled in the late nineteenth century by an Austrian doctor whose name in bears, it has destroyed the lives of millions of patents and their families. 

Peskin picks up the story in Colombia, well into the 20th century (1985). Whereas Alzheimer had dissected the brain of an early Alzheimer’s victim, two younger, unconventional health workers found symptoms in an isolated area. They eventually returned, with brain samples, to their labs in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There, they found brain plaques and went about trying to develop substances that would stop deterioration. They’re still under study today. However, all that could be done has been done. All that might be done is in place to get done. Alzheimer’s is almost certainly on its way out.

I want to digress into a personal story here. As a high school junior I was recruited to participate as an unpaid intern in a microbiology laboratory. My job, at first, was to pre-wash, for later sterilization, lab equipment like test tubes and slides. I was dressed in Hazmat outfits, my gloved hands directing steaming water and special detergent onto tray after tray of glassware. My supervisor, after observing my thoroughness, promoted me to test preparation, where I was tasked with measuring chemicals for application into experimental environments of living microorganisms. 

I once saw a scene which I never forgot. All of the lab’s scientists and staff (I was one of the lowliest) were convened to what turned out to be a confrontation/trial of one of us. He was a post-doc student recently arrived. And the test results of an experiment he was conducting were at variance with results

obtained by others using identical formulations. My boss himself, never reluctant to get his hands “dirty,” did some of the parallel testing. And there we all were, about two dozen of us, in our largest room, with my boss and the post doc in front of us.

“What can you tell us about this test?” my boss asked. The post-doc student leafed through papers (we still had most things on paper then – this was in the 1950’s) and then asked for time to go over them. His hands were shaking and he didn’t make eye contact as we left the room.

But there was another mass meeting, a very brief one, a few days later. As I recall the dialogue, it went something like my boss saying, “He made a mistake, but that’s not the bad part. The bad part is that he refused to admit he made a mistake. Even when I said that we all make mistakes, I’ve made a few myself…. and I told him a few true stories. Still, he wasn’t apologetic.”

He never came back.

That’s what I’m sure all of us retained.

That’s what I had in mind as I read “A Molecule Away from Madness.” Doctors Lopera and Kosik were like my boss. They came across an unusual phenomenon, devised a novel way of studying it, overcame tremendous obstacles in analyzing it (can you imagine transporting autopsy tissue from an isolated jungle to a modern laboratory 2,500 miles away?), took years to explore treatments, and eventually came up with answers — that are still under development.

The Alzheimer’s story is the longest one told by Peskin. But even in 20 pages Peskin finds room for only passing reference to an element unfortunately missing in her book. Who funds research? With what motivation? With what outcome? 

Here we have, if you will, one of humanity’s leading illnesses. We cannot find a way to use our ingenuity and resources. Because the enormous individual wealth, the enormous state resources, the plenty and bounty of our planet, are fenced off from our common good.

A medication for Alzheimer’s, Peskin informs us, was being developed in 2013 “with $15 million from the National Institutes of Health, $15 million from philanthropists, and $70 million from the drug company that made the medication.” Sounds like a lot, maybe, compared to what you may have, or ever hope to have. But it is pennies in the teacups of the planet. And these medications are often “fast tracked.” Which, bluntly speaking, means they are not sufficiently scientific. Science doesn’t like to be rushed,

That miracle drug for Alzheimer’s, Aduheim, has been “fast tracked” for sale.

If your situation is desperate, or you ‘re old and confused, or without the presence or language to understand what’s going on. you might say (or have said for you) “Bring it on!” Biogen, which manufacturers it, supposedly monitors what it does. Biogen makes money from its sale. See a potential conflict here? Governments and independent researchers are assumed to be doing the former without ties to the latter.

Nowhere in this book does Peskin discuss this contradiction, or legislative priorities, influencers, and outcomes. Nowhere does she write about how drug companies are massively involved in electoral politics through campaign donations and ubiquitous lobbyists.

Instead, she discourses at length – useful length – about proteins, about DNA and its nucleotides, about antibodies, and much else. My own formal education in such matters ended about the time in high school my job washing lab equipment and preparing experiments ended. Although in fact, with major impetus from my lab boss, I went to a University he respected, and with whose science departments he was associated. But my interest in what he was interested in didn’t last out my Freshman year. I almost failed Biology because I was required to read, with great teachers to guide me, philosophy, history and literature. Instead of haunting the labs, I haunted the libraries. 

Let’s end on a positive note. One of the major contributions of “A Molecule Away from Madness” is its emphasis on nutrition. If you’ve watched any commercial TV lately, you know what an annoying, loud, and persistent vibe is being pumped out to millions. Fats, salt, sugar, chemicals, are good for profits. If you think they’re good for people, take a closer look at people. Around here in California, they don’t look so good. Even the ones who are filling their shopping carts at Whole Foods. People consuming are rarely influenced beyond price, appearance and packaging. Smiling kids on cereal boxes. Fruit that doesn’t look weird or atypical (apples and oranges on trees aren’t all almost the same size and shape.). You don’t need a scientific background to improve what you eat and help avoid “madness.”

Thanks, Dr. Peskin for implicitly and explicitly pointing this out.

(Larry Bensky reviews books for MindSite News. He can be reached at LBensky@igc.org.)