Colombian Clan Could Lead Researchers to Alzheimer’s Cure

MEDELLIN, COLOMBIA—The man who would become known as Patient No. 1 was a 47-year-old farmer who had forgotten how to farm. His name was Pedro Julio, and his family had travelled through the mountains, on horseback and then by bus, to San Vicente de Paul hospital in Medellin. They wanted to know if Pedro Julio was developing the terrible sickness that had robbed his mother and grandmother of their senses. La bobera, they called it. The foolishness.

Dr. Francisco Lopera was the physician on staff that day, a few weeks before Christmas in 1984. He was a young neurology resident whose boyhood obsession with UFOs had sparked an early interest in astronomy, until he decided the mysteries of the human brain were more interesting.

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