Nuns Donate Their Brains to Alzheimer's Research

Many Catholic religious orders are participating in a long range Alzheimer's disease study. Rush University's Religious Orders Study began in 1993 and tracks the participants' mental abilities through yearly memory testing. In addition to the annual tests, the study subjects agree to donate their brains. From the article: "The researchers sought members of religious orders, hoping they would be willing to donate and would not have children or spouses interfering with that arrangement at the last minute. More than 1,100 nuns, priests and brothers across the country representing a wide range of ethnic groups are taking part."

Re:What if they discover ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What if they discover the other way around?

Plus with this data set you would not be able to tell, simply by the definition of the dataset. I swear what do they teach at the jr/sr high level these days... Oh and I learned scientific rigor AT a christian school. Want an F in science? Dont follow the scientific method. You would have got an F on that paper. As your whole assumption can not be proven with that data set. You are trying to apply science to something that can not be proven. There is such a thing as an intractable problem. Such as 'this statement is false'. Unprovable.

Re:Ummm Yes

[PyroMosh]

WNYC's Radiolab did a very similar story involved nuns donating their brains to Alzheimer's research. It was the University of Minnesota though, so it may also have been a different group of nuns.:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127211884 [npr.org]

Basicly, you are right. They Nuns were a good choice because (as they put it):

Snowdon wanted to look at aging over time, and decided to focus on sisters because they all had fairly similar histories and backgrounds. Most of them joined the School Sisters of Notre Dame congregation when they were 18, and all had abstained from smoking or drinking. So Snowdon signed up 678 sisters, all over the age of 75, from the order. All of the sisters agreed to donate a small part of their brains to the study after they died.

The study looked at writing as an indicator of Alzheimer's risk. And they chanced upon a jackpot - all the sisters in the study had essays that they had written at 18 or 19, roughly 70 years earlier.

Do yourself a favor and listen to that episode, or at least read the transcript.

These nuns provide an important service to AD res

[WillAffleckUW]

The reality is that nuns are a very good group of subjects, since they not only donate their brains after death - which is essential in determining AD status, but we have full medical histories on them for many decades.

None of our current studies focus on religion. The major risk factors are genetic and linked to diet and lifestyle.

Thanks for helping, sisters!

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[vadim_t]

I'm going to have to call 'citation needed' on you there. Einstein was quite clearly a believer in God.

Definitely not in the traditional way, no [wikiquote.org]

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws.

Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression.

Evidently, when he speaks of "god" he sort of means "the universe", and not any biblical character.