★ While the field of medical research has grown rapidly in recent years, the treatment of Alzheimer's disease has not progressed for a long time, and there have even been ineffective drugs that have caused death. The reasons for this are not only scientific difficulties, but also man-made: powerful interests, corrupt medical research policies, scientific fraud, and the rejection of new ideas outside of the mainstream... This book will unveil the shadows behind Alzheimer's research, which affects countless unfortunate families.
★ The case of the Alzheimer's drug problem will provide a warning for rationalizing research policy, preventing corruption and fraud.

Over the last few years, impressive results have been achieved in virtually every field of medical research. Suffice it to think of the revolutionary vaccines and messenger RNA that allowed us to tackle the Covid emergency in the space of just a few months, and with previously unthinkable efficacy.
Medicine has made progress in hundreds of pathologies and Big Pharma, the all-powerful multinational pharmaceuticals industry, is boasting ever-increasing sales.
Yet after decades of widespread specialised research, we are still lacking a drug for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. How is that possible? What happened?
After Alzheimer’s disease was first recognised (in 1898), the cause was immediately attributed to plaques formed by build-ups of a protein, amyloid beta, in the brains of sufferers, and the entire scientific community oriented itself towards that line of research. In a muddle of uncertain data, not to mention charges of scientific fraud, one pharmaceutical company came up with a drug which, despite an initially negative scientific opinion, was produced in the United States anyway, but it proved to be relatively ineffective and deaths were recorded.
Powerful interests are involved throughout this story, which has also been influenced by deeply corrupt medical research policy. In the meantime, the families of sufferers have to look elsewhere for someone to help them, and out of desperation many are willing to put their trust in all manner of charlatans, of whom, alas, there is no shortage.
Alzheimer S.p.A. focuses on research policy, the mistakes made, academic ostracism, power, and everything that has made it virtually impossible for independent scientists to propose theories alternative to the dominant one. Only recently have alternative ideas – from the disease’s viral origin to environmental conditions, from the presence of heavy metals to lifestyle – begun at last to make headway.
But research policy and funding have to change if they are to head in other more promising directions at last, abandoning once and for all the wrong road followed to date.

Agnese Codignola is a graduate in Pharmaceutical Chemistry. A scientific journalist, she is interested mainly in food science and medicine. She contributes to a number of Italian magazines and newspapers, among which L’Espresso, Focus and Il Sole 24 Ore, and has made frequent television appearances. Her publications include Il lungo COVID. La prima indagine sulle conseguenze a lungo termine del virus (Long Covid. The first investigation into the long-term consequences of the virus, 2022), Il destino del cibo. Così mangeremo per salvare il mondo (The Destiny of Food. This is how we’ll eat to save the world, 2020) and LSD. Da Albert Hofmann a Steve Jobs, da Timothy Leary a Robin Carhart-Harris: storia di una sostanza stupefacente (LSD. From Albert Hofmann to Steve Jobs, from Timothy Leary to Robin Carhart-Harris: the history of a narcotic substance, 2018)