http://www.psychotherapy.ro/sleep-disorder/the-family-that-couldnt-sleep-a-medical-mystery-6/books.html
last week in class we mentioned this story so i decided to look into it a bit further. This short summary doesn't go too far into the details of what happened but what they do say is that the reason for these people not being able to sleep is due to prions which are "mediocre proteins that sometimes go wrong, resulting in medicine illnesses that are ever fatal". These are the proteins that can cause mad cow disease and in this case it was the consumption of bad meat that caused the inability to sleep. The intake of these prions can have different results but is often deadly. If you find any better sources discussing the subject of the family that couldnt sleep more in depth then let me know.
2 comments:
hey, i'm the author of The Family That Couldn't Sleep. you've got the details slightly wrong though not by much. the family has an inherited form of a disease that's a lot like mad cow disease, the disease you get if you eat infected meat. But the famly members themselves come down with their disease just through genetic bad luck. hope that helps. dtmax@aol.com
Wow Daniel, Thanks so much for posting. I'll have to make your book required reading! Rebecca Winkel (course instructor)
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