THE mystery of “Cycad Island” may finally have been solved. The astonishingly high incidence of brain diseases on Guam in the western Pacific may be due to the islanders’ taste for flying foxes that feed on toxic seeds.
And it’s not just the islanders who have reason to worry. If one kind of food really causes diseases that resemble dementia, Parkinson’s and motor neuron disease, then perhaps other neurotoxins are triggering these diseases elsewhere.
Oliver Sacks highlighted the devastating epidemic of neurological diseases in Guam in his book The Island of the Color-Blind and Cycad Island. At its peak, a…
