THIS BOOK WAS made possible, first and foremost, by the patients and patient relatives who agreed to be interviewed. I am deeply grateful for their sincerity, openness and astonishing courage. For reasons of anonymity, I shall only cite those who agreed to share their real names; to all the people behind the pseudonyms, I offer you my heartfelt gratitude. I am also enormously thankful to the scientists and physicians for sharing their knowledge and intuition. Their remarkable ability to clarify complex topics provided the animating spirit for my writing, and I hope I have done their work justice.
I’m thankful to Gabriel Aristizábal, Kaj Blennow, Hari Chand, John Collinge, Paige Cramer, Sebastian Crutch, Jeffrey Cummings, Ricardo Dolmetsch, Matteo Farinella, Jens Foell, Nick Fox, Mary Ganguli, Alison Goate, Lawrence Goldstein, John Hardy, Martin Huntley, Victoria Huntley, Sarah Jarvis, Carol Jennings, John Jennings, Stuart Jennings, Mathias Jucker, Sasha Kamb, Ryuta Kawashima, William Klunk, Vijay Kumar, Michael Landon, Gary Landreth, Patrick Lewis, Francisco Lopera, Simon Lovestone, Lucía Madrigal, Karen Magorrian, George Martin, Chester Mathis, Marika Mattsson, Jeremy Mills, Pradeep Narayan, Karoly Nikolich, Thomas Piers, Jeremy Reed, Cressida Robson, Allen Roses, Maria Alejandra Ruiz, Natalie Ryan, Ian Sample, Dale Schenk, Kari Stefánsson, William Summers, Naji Tabet, Rudolph Tanzi, Selina Wray and Henrik Zetterberg.
A special thanks to Carrie Plitt, my exceedingly talented agent at Conville and Walsh, whose comments and revisions made this book significantly better. Additionally, this book could not have been published without the exceptional support of the teams at John Murray and Little, Brown. My wonderful editors, Kate Craigie and Georgina Laycock, provided countless insights in shaping this book.
I owe a huge thanks to Hajra Siraj, my most loyal reader. Her wisdom, guidance and unrivalled compassion helped me on this journey in innumerable ways. Finally, I am for ever indebted to my parents. They sacrificed so much for my education, and taught me at a young age that the purpose of life is to help others.