 | Teaching Science through History | ||||||||
Carleton Gajdusek & Kuru by Pierre Paul Gros (with contributions from Douglas Allchin)
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Download PDF text.
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| Teaching Science through History | ||||||||
Carleton Gajdusek & Kuru by Pierre Paul Gros (with contributions from Douglas Allchin)
NOS features include:
Download PDF text.
| |||||||||
In the 1950s, a mysterious neurodegenerative disease called kuru appeared among the primitive Fore people of Papua New Guinea. Natives attributed it to sorcery. American D. Carleton Gajdusek conducted epidemiological studies among the remote tribe and later transmission studies in lab animals. He found that kuru was propagated by a "slow virus," a new disease transmission type, a discovery for which he received a Nobel Prize. Decades later, Gajdusek's "slow virus" was identified as a prion. Gajdusek's interactions with the Fore people and, later in his life, sexual relations with Fore boys raise many questions at the intersection of science, culture and ethics.
