The Best Australian Science Writing 2013 by Jane McCredie Read Free Book Online Page A

and nervous system, one that was capable of crossing the species barrier and which passed via unidentified agents lurking within brain matter. These agents would later be identified as a single infectious, self-propagating protein – which broke all previously assumed rules, in that they did not possess nucleic acid. They were given the moniker ‘prions’, and their identification earned another scientist (Stanley B Prusiner) a Nobel prize. Prions bore the distinction of being the first new pathogen identified in more than a century.
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    Momentuous as the 1966 breakthrough was, kuru remained elusive. What was the mechanism spreading the contagion? Carleton Gajdusek resisted what he felt was the too-glib notion that consumption of human flesh was to blame. He argued that the infection might have travelled through cuts or sores or dabbing of eyes during ritual handling of the dead’s organs. Local kiap Jack Baker reckoned the scientists were overthinking it, overlooking the obvious.
    Alpers had by then spent several years reviewing the epidemiology of the disease, trawling through data collected by patrol officers, scientists and missionaries. Their work had been ably assisted by the Fore people’s formidable collective memory – ‘cause of death is always known, even going back three generations’, explains Alpers.
    He combined the charts with the insights of anthropologists working in the field, and the secrets of Fore ritual that had been entrusted to him. The Fore’s complex eschatology declared that each individual had five souls; that after death they travelled the land on a kind of farewell tour from which ultimately – assuming various rituals over a period of years were honoured – they would be reunited in the land of the ancestors. The most efficient path to this hereafter was for the body to be eaten.
    As Alpers, with Jerome Whitfield and other colleagues summarised in a recent paper: ‘If the body was buried it was eaten by worms; if it was placed on a platform it was eaten by maggots; the Fore believed it was much better that the body was eaten by people who loved the deceased than by worms and insects. By eating their dead, they were able to show their love and express their grief.’
    It was the women’s responsibility to eat the dead, grinding the bones and cooking the flesh, indulging their children alongthe way with the tastiest bits. Particular body parts were given to particular female kin. Although small boys joined in the feasting, they were generally excluded after about age ten.
    By 1964 Alpers had solid figures on kuru deaths spread over seven years. ‘I compared the data for 1957, 1958 and 1959 with 1961, 1962 and 1963, and looked for any changing patterns. Overall, there was not much, but if you looked at the young kids, the disease had essentially disappeared – even in that short time. This was a major change.’ Obviously there had been some social or environmental shift. But so much in the Fore world had been in a state of upheaval during that era.
    â€˜We made a list, Carleton and I, and there were lots of changes. The introduction of new foods, new animals, the cessation of certain activities. But the one that was biologically the most relevant was the mortuary practices, at least in my view.’ A couple of years later, field surveys confirmed the disease had died out in children younger than ten – which fitted with the kiaps effectively administering new rules of behaviour through the district. The rules were, says Alpers, ‘No fighting, build roads, no cannibalism, no child marriage, and plant coffee. And they did it.’
    When Alpers put his data together for a presentation in Washington in 1967 ‘the argument for cannibalism – and I don’t use that term anymore, but it was used then – was compelling. Everything fitted. Why did women and children get the disease? Because they were the