Politics, Policy, PTSD and Prions: football players, soldiers and older people

A discussion of the revolutionary advances in brain degeneration, focusing on federal and business support for developing drugs to prevent and treat neurodegenerative diseases, e.g. Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s diseases, in athletes, combatants and the elderly.

Stanley B. Prusiner, M.D. is Director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases and Professor of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. Editor of 11 books and author of over 500 research articles, Dr. Prusiner’s contributions to scientific research are internationally recognized. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1997) and the United States National Medal of Science (2009) for his work.

Dr. Prusiner discovered prions, a class of pathogens that manifest as (1) sporadic, (2) inherited and (3) infectious illnesses. Dr. Prusiner has proven that prions cause neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and many of the frontotemporal dementias (FTDs) as well as some forms of ALS. Much of his current research focuses on developing therapeutics that reduce the levels of prions causing these neurodegenerative diseases.