Interesting medical news. Change in paradigm as to the cause of this condition
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/jun...insanity-virus
Quote:
The facts of schizophrenia are so peculiar, in fact, that they have led Torrey and a growing number of other scientists to abandon the traditional explanations of the disease and embrace a startling alternative. Schizophrenia, they say, does not begin as a psychological disease. Schizophrenia begins with an infection.
The idea has sparked skepticism, but after decades of hunting, Torrey and his colleagues think they have finally found the infectious agent. You might call it an insanity virus. If Torrey is right, the culprit that triggers a lifetime of hallucinations?that tore apart the lives of writer Jack Kerouac, mathematician John Nash, and millions of others?is a virus that all of us carry in our bodies. ?Some people laugh about the infection hypothesis,? says Urs Meyer, a neuroimmunologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. ?But the impact that it has on researchers is much, much, much more than it was five years ago. And my prediction would be that it will gain even more impact in the future.?
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