Anderson: The Collectors of Lost Souls
From Scienticity
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Warwick Anderson, The Collectors of Lost Souls : Turning Kuru Scientists Into Whitemen. Baltimore [MD], Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. 318 pages.
It is the story of the Fore, a group of people who live in the isolated highlands of Papua New Guinea. When white people first met the Fore in the 1930's and 40's, they found them suffering from an illness that caused muscle weakness, tremors, lack of coordination, and eventually death. They also discovered that the Fore eat their dead as a sign of respect and that they believe in sorcery. It was mainly women and children who were ill and the Fore attributed this frightening, wasting sickness to very evil magic. They call it Kuru.
Warwick Anderson, a medical doctor and science historian, through years of research, travel, and interviews with Fore people, medical researchers, anthropologists, and others, brings together all the different elements of the study of Kuru, that includes cultural anthropology, virology, epidemiology, and colonial history and leads to the science of medical anthropology and to questions of medical ethics. He tracks the research of many anthropologists and epidemiologists and tells of their discovery that, by eating their loved ones after death, the Fore where actually spreading the disease. All this research, and the many scientists taking part in the study, lead to the idea of a "slow virus" and eventually to the discovery of Prions, the same biological cells that spread "Mad Cow" disease.
Anderson gives everyone, scientists, researchers, and Fore alike, a say in the story. He also exposes the moral and ethic dilemmas involved with this type of medical research. Who owns the findings? The researchers, the biomedical companies, or the people who donated their blood and bodies to the study of this disease? It is a very important question as we delve deeper into the human body and its genetic makeup.
-- Notes by GG
