Global search for first patient proven spontaneously cured of Alzheimer’s disease, announces Dr. Leslie Norins of Alzheimer’s Germ Quest, Inc.
Has even one person in the world ever been proven spontaneously cured of Alzheimer’s disease (AD)? That’s what Leslie Norins, MD, PhD wants to find out. He is CEO of Alzheimer’s Germ Quest, Inc., which is launching a global search to find a physician who can furnish persuasive proof of at least one such survivor, Alzheimer’s Spontaneous Cure Challenge Award. A $100,000 incentive prize is offered.
But, Dr. Norins cautions, locating a convincing case will not be easy. Even Catholic authorities he queried could find no report of a miracle cure of AD. [See sidebar “No Alzheimer’s Miracle Cure Known to Catholic Church”]
In the U.S. alone, the Alzheimer’s Association estimates there are presently 5.7 million individuals with AD. About 50 million people worldwide are thought to have dementia.
Current medical opinion is that AD is uniformly fatal after 2-10 years of progressive mental deterioration. In more than 1,000 clinical trials, no curative substance has been revealed. Thus, finding and studying even a single proven case of spontaneous cure could possibly provide answers to help the millions of AD patients presently considered doomed. [See below “Single Cases”]
But Dr. Norins says those millions of AD patients worldwide have varied genes, lifestyles, environmental factors, and medical histories. He feels the billions of possible combinations of these factors create good odds that an AD cure has occurred spontaneously, unexpectedly at least a few times.
But if so, why haven’t we heard of it? He theorizes the answer could be that nobody has been specifically looking for such rare individuals. Plus, “With the prevailing view that AD is fatal, a physician encountering a spontaneous cure might have been reluctant to report the case for fear of ridicule,” Dr. Norins says.
Dr. Norins says he utilized the government’s medical search engine PubMed, and Google, but turned up nothing. Though of course there are millions of references to AD, he could find only one medical journal report even possibly relevant: a patient’s daughter reported to the physician there had been a three-day “transient awakening” of her mother from AD with cognitive impairment, which unfortunately relapsed. (Bloch F Clin Case Rep. 2016 Apr; 4(4): 376–378. doi: 10.1002/ccr3.530).
Dr. Norins says his quest is not deterred by the long odds, saying, “With the bleak statistics about AD, one could easily be pessimistic about discovering an instance of spontaneous cure. But, if you don’t seek, you can’t find. Therefore, through this project we are encouraging physicians to look harder, and if they have convincing evidence to submit an entry without fear of our ridicule.”
Physicians: You could win $100,000
Researchers and clinicians worldwide need to find out if there has ever been a proven case of spontaneous cure of Alzheimer’s disease. Studying such a patient could provide valuable clues to the cause and a potential treatment. Physicians: If you have potentially promising information, please submit a Preliminary Expression of Interest.
Single cases have provided clues to aid other serious diseases
Are there any examples of major medical breakthroughs arising from finding and studying just one patient? Yes, but these situations are uncommon, and require both scientific curiosity and, perhaps, an element of luck. Four examples will illustrate this.
Leukemia. The “Philadelphia chromosome”, which stimulated research into the roles of genes in leukemia, was identified in one patient in 1959:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_chromosome
HIV resistance. Another example is the ability of certain white cells to resist invasion by HIV. This retrovirus was discovered in 1983. But it took 24 years, until 2007, to recognize and study the first patient whose new white cells, arising from a donor’s bone marrow, were genetically able to bar entrance of the retrovirus. This effectively brought his HIV infection under control. He was labeled “the Berlin patient”, and his case stimulated research worldwide.
Jessen H, Allen TM, Streeck H (February 2014). “How a single patient influenced HIV research – 15-year follow-up”. The New England Journal of Medicine. 370 (7): 682–83. doi:10.1056/NEJMc1308413
It then took twelve years more, until 2019, for a second such individual to be discovered, in England. He was labeled “the London patient.”
Nature 568:244–248 (2019) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1027-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00798-3
Cancer defense. An early-career encounter, in 1968, with a man whose previously noted cancer metastases had unexpectedly disappeared without treatment, i.e. spontaneously, inspired Dr. Steven Rosenberg’s decades of investigation of the body’s ability to cure itself. Today, he is a leading researcher on immunological treatment of cancer at the National Cancer Institute, and its chief cancer surgeon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/health/cancer-cell-therapy-immune-system.html
IgG4-related disease. Haven’t heard of this? Don’t worry. Nobody else had either in 2008, when a woman from Casablanca walked into Massachusetts General Hospital seeking help for a swelling in her neck. Study led to the revelation of this disease, whereupon “patients came out of the woodwork”.
https://giving.massgeneral.org/strange-symptoms-to-disease-discovery/
No Alzheimer’s Miracle Cure Known to Catholic Church
Dr. Leslie Norins says, “My initial thought was that a spontaneous cure of AD would have been so unexpected it could have been officially classified as a ‘miracle’ by the Catholic Church.”
So, he queried the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, at the Curia of the Holy See, in Rome, which holds records of accepted miracles*, and investigates the validity of presumed ones as part of elevations to sainthood. The Prefect’s letter of response states that the Church knows of no miracle cure of AD.
Dr. Norins also asked the research librarians at Catholic University of America (Washington), and University of Notre Dame (South Bend). Both reported they were unable to find any mention of an official Church miracle curing AD, nor even a miraculous cure of “dementia”, the broader category which includes AD.
*A miraculous cure of AD would seem to fit within the Church’s miracles of the second degree. According to Wikipedia, “The second concerns the subject (quoad subiectum): the sickness of a person is judged incurable, in its course it can even have destroyed bones or vital organs; in this case not only is complete recovery noticed, but even wholesale reconstitution of the organs (restitutio in integrum).” In AD the most relevant organ is the brain, especially its roles in cognition, function, and behavior.
For Additional Information
- Duffin J, Medical Miracles, Doctors, Saints and Healing in the Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
- François B, Sternberg EM, and Fee E, The Lourdes Medical Cures Revisited, J Hist Med Allied Sci. 2014 Jan; 69(1): 135–162.. doi: 1093/jhmas/jrs041.
“…Second, the recognition of a Lourdes cure has been hampered by Lambertini’s canons that had to be fulfilled for a cure to be acknowledged as a miracle. The requirements were that (a) the disease be severe, incurable, or difficult to treat (vel impossibilis, vel curatu difficilis), (b) the disease not be in its final stage, (c) no curative treatment had been given, (d) the cure be instantaneous (quod sanatio sit subita et instantanea), and (e) the cure be complete (ut sanatio sit perfecta) and without relapse (ut recidiva, sublato morbo, non contigat) …”
- The 67 Cures at Lourdes which have been recognized as miraculous by the Church
- Cancer: The mysterious miracle cures inspiring doctors
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150306-the-mystery-of-vanishing-cancer
Physicians: You could win $100,000
Researchers and clinicians worldwide need to find out if there has ever been a proven case of spontaneous cure of Alzheimer’s disease. Studying such a patient could provide valuable clues to the cause and a potential treatment. Physicians: If you have potentially promising information, please submit a Preliminary Expression of Interest.