The best control group to study Alzheimer's appears to be nuns. And let's not forget Sister Josita.
That is the extraordinary discovery made by Professor David Bennett, an American neuropathologist investigating Alzheimer's disease...
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Then, within hours of a nun dying in the concrete tower-block nunnery, her body is hurried the few miles to the Rush University Medical Centre, where her brain is removed and sliced into discs, and stored alongside the 1,000 other brains in Prof Bennett's research programme.
The brain slices are examined for evidence of neuritic plaques - abnormal whorls of brain tissue - and neurofibrillary tangles, which are mixed-up bundles of nerve fibres. These were the symptoms first spotted by Aloiz Alzheimer in 1906 in a woman who had died of an unusual mental illness.
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"I'm very happy to give away my brain," says Sister Michele Elfering, 76, who has been with the order since she was 18, and has taught maths and reading in Chicago schools, rising to become a headmistress, "I'd do anything I can do to help with Alzheimer's. I've seen so many sisters get it. It begins with them being forgetful; starting a conversation and not being able to finish it. Then they forget where things are in the kitchen. They'll go for a glass of water and start looking in the condiments drawer. You can see it happening. You're very aware of it, though it's very slow. Sometimes they'll have a strong memory of their childhood and no memory of what they did five minutes ago."
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"Often, the sisters who get Alzheimer's seem to be lost in another world and then they'll suddenly start saying the Our Father or singing hymns, or just talk about God. It seems that the last thing to go is praying."