The basic reality of mind and spongiform diseases

A change in handedness (chirality) in some amino acids appears to be the ba sic physical change in degradation-resistant proteins (prions) found in con ditions such as Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD), Alzheimer's disease (AD), bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and ovine scrapie. The affected stru ctures are primarily innervated by cholinergic nerves. Much evidence sugges ts that these so-called prions (here named chirons) are harmless, non-infec tious products. The importance of the cholinergic system allows a new simpl ified interpretation of these conditions. The main steps are the acetylchol ine-cholinesterase splitting of body water with release of free protons in solution, followed by electron dissipation, dioxygen activation and Ca-flux es. Abiotic physics conserves parity and symmetry by equal amounts of L- an d D-forms of molecules. In contrast, the asymmetric pattern of life must be homochiral. Such biomolecules dissolve in water and are thus able to inter act in cholinergic hydrodynamics. It is supposed that the instability of th e composite weak force by beta -decay causes changes in chirality. These ex tremely rare events are not frequent enough to explain disease pathology. E xperimental, accidental, surgical and abusive inoculations will propagate c hirons according to the physical law of self-replication, which also occurs in test tubes without added biological products. Chirons will not be degra ded into amino acids in the alimentary canal and will, because they are ind igestible, leave the body with the faeces. Chirons are inert also to the im mune system and will be engulfed without reaction by phagocytosing cells. T hey are then stored away in tissues, where they do no harm (if not detected and suspected to be deleterious, thereby causing pathogenic anxiety). The cholinergic system reacts to all kinds of integrity threats and it is this reaction which I propose causes the so-called prion diseases. This patholog y seems generally valid, and is here exemplified in AD, CJD, and Kuru disea se. it is the cholinergic reaction and not the agent per se that is pathoge nic. This is also true of viral infections where the interaction between vi ral infection and response may explain the enigmatic epidemiology of many n eurodegenerative diseases. Intensity and duration of challenges will determ ine pathophysiology. The new variant of CJD, vCJD, is assumed to result fro m mutation of a slow virus agent into a more intense variant, which will gi ve disease in younger patients. The pathology is primary protonic, with ove ractivity in most sub-systems of either enhancing or inhibiting character, but also functional failure or cell death by membrane damage and acidificat ion, for instance in the CNS. The practical results of this proposal will b e alleviation of the current BSE crisis. The important main aspects are: ch irons are not infectious proteins but inert physical by-products; they are indigestible and not immunogenic, so beef is safe; properly processed and h andled meat and bone-meal are not likely to transmit neurodegenerative dise ases; chirons cannot even serve as markers in neurologic diseases. (C) 2001 Harcourt Publishers Ltd.