Maja Beckstrom

Reporter

Maja Beckstrom joined APM Reports in 2017. She previously worked as a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota where she covered everything from government welfare reform to family lifestyle features. She was also a reporter at the Ventura County Star in southern California and with Minnesota Public Radio. Her work has been recognized by the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, the Minnesota Society for Professional Journalists and the Online News Association. She's a graduate of Brown University.

Stories

October 15, 2019

Alzheimer's research: The setup and setbacks

A select timeline of research, discovery, salesmanship and spending. Said Zaven Khachaturian, a former director of Alzheimer's research at the National Institute on Aging: 'Every major pharmaceutical company put money into the amyloid idea, and they all failed because the idea was flawed ... It became gradually an infallible belief system ... that's not very healthy for science when scientists ... accept an idea as infallible. That's when you run into problems.'

October 15, 2019

The invention of a disease and the pursuit of one molecule

In the 1970s, the founder of the National Institute on Aging convinced a nation that senility was really Alzheimer's and could be cured. Research money flowed to one theory, leaving alternatives unexamined — today it's come up short.