Kuru Sorcery

Perhaps the best-documented epidemic in the history of medicine, kuru has been studied for more than fifty years by international investigators from medicine and the human sciences. This significantly revised edition of the landmark anthropological classic Kuru Sorcery brings up to date the anthropological contribution to understanding disease, the medical research that resulted in two medical Nobel Prizes, and the views of the Fore people who endured the epidemic and who still believe that sorcerers, rather than cannibalism, caused kuru. The kuru epidemic serves as a prism through which to see how Fore notions of disease causation bring into single focus their views about the body, the world of social and spiritual relations, and changes in economic and political conditions-aspects of thought and behaviour that Western medicine keeps separate.

"Combining the molecular, clinical, and historical aspects of virology, Understanding Viruses is a textbook for the modern undergraduate virology course. The text provides an introduction to human viral diseases. Additional chapters on viral diseases of animals; the history of clinical trials, gene therapy, and xenotransplantation; prions and viroids; plant viruses; and bacteriophages add to the coverage."--Jacket.

These eighty-two letters speak for themselves. They document the discovery and the origins and pursuance of the first year of study of kuru in great detail and should serve to dispel any misconceptions about who did what, and answer many hows, whens, and whys about the early field work and laboratory investigations on kuru. Above all, the publication of these letters is a tribute to the late Dr. Joseph E. Smadel who had so much to do with the first year of our kuru investigation, and through whom the laboratory at the National Institutes of Health became our base, where we were able to demonstrate the slow virus etiology of kuru, the first proved slow virus infection of man.

This comprehensive work, aimed at both students and researchers alike, systematically covers all aspects of prion diseases (transmissible spongiform encephalopathies), from their history, microbiology and pathology to their transmissibility and prevention. The book describes diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, kuru, mad cow disease (BSE), chronic wasting disease and scrapie, highlighting their biochemical, molecular biological, genetic, and clinical aspects. A detailed presentation of the impact of prion diseases in fields such as pharmaceutics, blood products, disinfection, surgical instruments and epidemiology concludes with a discussion of preventive measures. A renowned editorial team, representing the fields of medicine, veterinary medicine and molecular biology, brought together 80 internationally respected authors for this translation and new edition of the successful German publication, not only from relevant research fields, but also from industry and public health institutions. The book includes chapters by, among many other notable scientists, William J. Hadlow, who discovered the relationship between the human and animal forms of prion diseases and Michael P. Alpers, with 45 years of experience in Papua New Guinea investigating the first known human epidemic form, kuru, transmitted by endocannibalism. Further contributions from Gerald A. H. Wells, a veterinary pathologist who described BSE and recognised its similarity to scrapie, thus recording the first cases in 1986 of the most important animal epidemic of modern times, and Robert G. Will, a medical neurologist and epidemiologist who discovered the emergence of the variant form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in 1996, underscore the strength of this author team. Carefully edited with numerous illustrations, this work offers a systematic approach committed to a clear presentation of the current knowledge of prion diseases. It aims to inspire and stimulate interdisciplinary cooperation, innovative research ideas and effective prevention.

This riveting account of medical detective work traces the story of kuru, a fatal brain disease, and the pioneering scientists who spent decades searching for its cause and cure. Winner, William H. Welch Medal, American Association for the History of Medicine Winner, Ludwik Fleck Prize, Society for Social Studies of Science Winner, General History Award, New South Wales Premier's History Awards When whites first encountered the Fore people in the isolated highlands of colonial New Guinea during the 1940s and 1950s, they found a people in the grip of a bizarre epidemic. Women and children succumbed to muscle weakness, uncontrollable tremors, and lack of coordination, until death inevitably supervened. Facing extinction, the Fore attributed their unique and terrifying affliction to a particularly malign form of sorcery. In The Collectors of Lost Souls, Warwick Anderson tells the story of the resilience of the Fore through this devastating plague, their transformation into modern people, and their compelling attraction for a throng of eccentric and adventurous scientists and anthropologists. Battling competing scientists and the colonial authorities, the brilliant and troubled American doctor D. Carleton Gajdusek determined that the cause of the epidemic—kuru—was a new and mysterious agent of infection, which he called a slow virus (now called a prion). Anthropologists and epidemiologists soon realized that the Fore practice of eating their loved ones after death had spread the slow virus. Though the Fore were never convinced, Gajdusek received the Nobel Prize for his discovery. Now revised and updated, the book includes an extensive new afterword that situates its impact within the fields of science and technology studies and the history of science. Additionally, the author now reflects on his long engagement with the scientists and the people afflicted, describing what has happened to them since the end of kuru. This astonishing story links first-contact encounters in New Guinea with laboratory experiments in Bethesda, Maryland; sorcery with science; cannibalism with compassion; and slow viruses with infectious proteins, reshaping our understanding of what it means to do science.

Applying data from over 150 tribal societies to scales developed to measure power and dominance, Sanday offers answers to basic questions regarding male and female power. The view that emerges conforms to no particular theoretical perspective.

It has been a difficult, sometimes painful, story to tell in its entirety, but I have done my best to be accurate both in facts and in dates, for I feel that l owe the truth to the many who have become valued acquaintances, and sometimes friends. All these have constantly requested more news of my "Green Dwelling" and my discovery of a fatal neurological disease previously unknown to Western medicine. This book is for them, in lieu of letters that I ought to have written and did not. It is also my concern to produce innocent amusement, unrestricted by canon or precedent, for those who require some relaxation from the fatigue generated by so many parasitic forms of life in this less than perfect world. My peers, the medical scientists, who read this will realize that this book is neither a scientific treatise, nor a balance-sheet of all the achievements and failures of medical science, but a presentation of the major implications of the factors that continually determine our medical ethics - including some of the less prizeworthy drawbacks.

Charles Darwin's "On the Origins of Species" had two principal goals: to show that species had not been separately created and to show that natural selection had been the main force behind their proliferation and descent from common ancestors. In "Coevolution," the author proposes a powerful new theory of cultural evolution--that is, of the descent with modification of the shared conceptual systems we call "cultures"--that is parallel in many ways to Darwin's theory of organic evolution. The author suggests that a process of cultural selection, or preservation by preference, driven chiefly by choice or imposition depending on the circumstances, has been the main but not exclusive force of cultural change. He shows that this process gives rise to five major patterns or "modes" in which cultural change is at odds with genetic change. Each of the five modes is discussed in some detail and its existence confirmed through one or more case studies chosen for their heuristic value, the robustness of their data, and their broader implications. But "Coevolution" predicts not simply the existence of the five modes of gene-culture relations; it also predicts their relative importance in the ongoing dynamics of cultural change in particular cases. The case studies themselves are lucid and innovative reexaminations of an array of oft-pondered anthropological topics--plural marriage, sickle-cell anemia, basic color terms, adult lactose absorption, incest taboos, headhunting, and cannibalism. In a general case, the author's goal is to demonstrate that an evolutionary analysis of both genes and culture has much to contribute to our understanding of human diversity, particularly behavioral diversity, and thus to the resolution of age-old questions about nature and nurture, genes and culture.