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Early descriptions of kuru: instinct, insects and intellect

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Andrew Chancellor, Department of Medicine, Tauranga Hospital, Private Bag, Tauranga, New Zealand;
andrew.chancellor@bopdhb.govt.nz

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In the early 1950s, when Australian administration patrols first penetrated the mountainous country of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, the officers were shown a number of Fore people disabled by a condition of irregular muscular spasms. The Fore called the disorder "kuru", which in their language meant "trembling with fear" and they held sorcerers responsible for the disease. The Fore practice of seeking out and killing suspected sorcerers meant the disease posed a persistent threat to the establishment of law and order that the administration was attempting to enforce in the region.

The discovery of this disease, common among a remote people recently exposed to European influence, together with the unique ethnic and cultural setting within which it occurred, aroused worldwide media and scientific interest. In 1957, Gajdusek and Zigas detailed the geographic and ethnic background of kuru and the salient clinical features of ataxia and involuntary movement.¹ . . . [Full text of this article]