Chief medical officer accused of ‘attempting to discredit’ Alzheimer’s study

Dame Sally Davies, the Government’s chief medical officer has been accused of attempting to soften the impact of controversial Alzheimer’s study before the findings were published by the leading journal Nature.

The Independent newspaper said that, according to sources, Dame Sally (pictured) approached the editor of a rival journal “to discredit the study in the eyes of the public”.

She allegedly contacted the editor of The Lancet medical journal, Dr Richard Horton, asking for his help in reducing the risk of a public health scare.

The study, published in Nature earlier this month, raised the possibility of “seeds” of Alzheimer’s-associated brain changes being transmitted from one person to another through certain medical procedures.

It was based on the brain autopsies of eight people aged between 36 and 51 who died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) after receiving injections of human growth hormone derived from the pituitary glands of dead people.

Seven of the eight had signs of a brain protein known to be an Alzheimer’s hallmark. Yet none had a genetic predisposition to the disease and they were too young to have developed it naturally.

The discovery by a team led by Professor John Collinge, a leading authority on transmissible brain diseases, was evidence that Alzheimer’s “seeds” were transferred with the growth hormone as well as the CJD infective agent.

There were also wider implications deserving further investigation, said Prof Collinge’s team, including the possibility that the “seeds” might accidentally contaminate surgical instruments and be transmitted by other medical procedures.

An editorial published by The Lancet this week said that on September 5 the journal was alerted by “a UK Government source” to the impending publication of the Nature paper. The source was “anxious about the likely media coverage and the potential for a public health scare” and “urged us to consider what we might do to reduce further the risk of a scare”.

That source was Dame Sally, according to the Independent article written by the paper’s science editor Steve Connor. He understood that she had contacted Dr Horton, who she knows personally.

The editorial, entitled Alzheimergate? When Miscommunication Met Sensationalism, is highly critical of the way the story was covered by the media. It says the research paper did not provide evidence of transmission of Alzheimer’s disease, echoing a statement issued earlier by Dame Sally.

However Prof Collinge himself said at a press conference: “Although it is not cause for alarm that it is in any way contagious, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think about whether there might be accidental routes by which this disease might be transmitted by certain medical procedures.”

After being approached, the Lancet said it wrote to the Science Media Centre – which was co-ordinating expert reaction to the findings – “explaining our understanding of the potential alarm and asking if we could help in some way”.

A Department of Health spokesman said: “The Chief Medical Officer raised concerns about the potential for misreporting of the research, not the research itself.

“She mentioned these in a chance meeting.”

Dr Horton was unavailable for comment last night.

If the claims are true it means Dame Sally broke the strict embargo terms of the publishing journal, Nature, which prohibit any approaches to third parties unless “solely for soliciting informed comment”.

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