THE BRAIN UNDER SIEGE

Harvard University professor Weiner surveys the challenges of neurological ailments and the extraordinary progress in understanding and treating them.

According to the author, the brain is “the last great frontier of medical science”—an organ that’s maddeningly complex and central not only to biological life, but also to consciousness and identity: “The brain is unique, and because of this it poses unique challenges,” he says. Problematically, this miraculous organ is plagued by a variety of neurological diseases, and the author devotes his book to a discussion of five of them: multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), and glioblastoma (brain tumors). Weiner provides a very thorough account of each, including their causes and current research into potential cures, and makes an optimistic case for future progress on all counts, with treatments for MS the most immediately promising and Alzheimer’s the most vexing; he characterizes the latter as the “number-one scourge of civilization at this time.” Throughout, he considers a range of relevant issues, including the “complex detective work” involved in the search for cures, the tangled world of publication and funding, and even the motivation that professional recognition provides to researchers. Weiner is the Robert L. Kroc Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and the founder and director of the Brigham MS Center and co-director of the Ann Romney Center in Boston, and his command of the material in this book is magisterial. That said, its comprehensiveness may prove prohibitive to lay readers. Although Weiner’s prose is likely as accessible as the technical nature of the subject permits, readers will find it more challenging than most popular scientific literature. For those who are up to the challenge, though, this is a masterful and rigorous rendering of the state of neurological disease research infused with a rationally defensible sense of hope.

A meticulous overview of the ongoing battle against brain diseases.