Daniel Carleton Gajdusek
Encyclopedia
Daniel Carleton Gajdusek was an American
physician
and medical researcher who was the co-recipient (with Baruch S. Blumberg) of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
in 1976 for work on kuru
, the first human prion
disease demonstrated to be infectious.
, now Smrdáky
, Slovakia
and was an ethnic Slovak who was a butcher. His maternal grandparents, ethnic Hungarians of the Calvinist faith
, emigrated from Debrecen
, Hungary. Gajdusek was born in Yonkers, New York, and graduated in 1943 from the University of Rochester
, where he studied physics, biology, chemistry and mathematics. He obtained an M.D.
from Harvard University
in 1946 and performed postdoctoral research at Columbia University
, the California Institute of Technology
, and Harvard. In the early 1950s, Gajdusek was drafted into the military as a research virologist
at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
. In 1954 he went to work as a visiting investigator at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
in Melbourne
, Australia
. There, he began the work that culminated in the Nobel prize
.
. This disease was rampant among the South Fore people of New Guinea
in the 1950s and 1960s. Gajdusek connected the spread of the disease to the practice of funerary cannibalism
by the South Fore. With elimination of cannibalism, kuru disappeared among the South Fore within a generation.
Gajdusek was introduced to the problem of kuru by Vincent Zigas, a district medical officer in the Fore Tribe region of New Guinea. Gajdusek provided the first medical description of this unique neurological disorder
, which was miscast in the popular press as the "laughing sickness" because some patients evinced risus sardonicus
as a symptom. He lived among the Fore, studied their language and culture, and performed autopsies
on kuru victims.
Gajdusek concluded that kuru was transmitted by the ritualistic consumption of the brains of deceased relatives, which was practiced by the Fore. He then proved this hypothesis by successfully transmitting the disease to primates and demonstrating that it had an unusually long incubation period of several years. This was the first demonstration of the infectious spread of a non-inflammatory degenerative disease in humans.
Kuru was shown to have remarkable similarity with scrapie
, a disease of sheep and goats caused by an unconventional infectious agent. Subsequently, additional human agents belonging to the same group were discovered. They include sporadic, familial, and variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. Though Gajdusek was not able to identify the exact biological nature of the infective agent that spreads kuru, further research of scrapie agent by Stanley Prusiner and others led to the identification of rogue proteins called prion
s as the cause of these diseases.
While Gajdusek's work is generally accepted by the medical community, some have questioned whether cannibalism was still practiced at the time of Gajdusek's research. Willam Arens, an anthropologist known for his criticism of reports of learned cannibalism
, claims that Gajdusek never actually witnessed cannibalism himself. Researchers who worked with the Fore in the 1950s claimed that cannibalism was suppressed in 1948, almost a decade before Gajdusek arrived in New Guinea. Arens further alleges that the stories presented as evidence of Fore cannibalism often contradict each other and contain elements of sexism
and racism
. According to Arens, the decline of kuru coincided with the arrival of Europeans to the area in 1961, an event that caused many substantial changes in Fore life that could have led to the improvement in health conditions.
In contrast, many other researchers, including Robert Klitzman
, S. Lindenbaum, R. Glasse, and kuru field researchers at the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research have documented reports that confirm the practice. Gajdusek became head of the laboratories for virological and neurological research at the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) in 1958 and was inducted to the National Academy of Sciences
in 1974 in the discipline of microbial biology.
Gajdusek was charged with child molestation in April 1996, based on incriminating entries in his personal diary and statements from a victim. He pleaded guilty in 1997 and, under a plea bargain
, was sentenced to 12 months in jail. After his release in 1998, he was permitted to serve his five-year unsupervised probation
in Europe. He never returned to the United States and lived in Amsterdam
, Paris
, and Tromsø
. Gajdusek's treatment had been denounced from October 1996 as anti-elitist and unduly harsh by controversial Edinburgh University psychologist Chris Brand
.
The documentary The Genius and the Boys by Bosse Lindquist
, first shown on BBC Four
on June 2, 2009, notes that "seven men testified in confidentiality about Gajdusek having had sex with them when they were boys", that four said "the sex was untroubling" while for three of them "the sex was a shaming, abusive and a violation". One of these boys, the son of a friend and now an adult, appears in the film. Furthermore, Gajdusek openly admits to molesting boys and his approval of incest
. The film tries to understand not only Gajdusek's sexual mores, but also his deeper motivations for science, exploration and life.
, Norway
, at the age of 85. He was working and visiting colleagues in Tromsø at the time of his death.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
and medical researcher who was the co-recipient (with Baruch S. Blumberg) of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will...
in 1976 for work on kuru
Kuru (disease)
Kuru is an incurable degenerative neurological disorder that is a type of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, caused by a prion found in humans...
, the first human prion
Prion
A prion is an infectious agent composed of protein in a misfolded form. This is in contrast to all other known infectious agents which must contain nucleic acids . The word prion, coined in 1982 by Stanley B. Prusiner, is a portmanteau derived from the words protein and infection...
disease demonstrated to be infectious.
Early years
Gajdusek's father, Karol Gajdusek, was from Büdöskö, Kingdom of HungaryKingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...
, now Smrdáky
Smrdáky
Smrdáky is a spa village and municipality in Senica District in the Trnava Region of western Slovakia.-Geography:The municipality lies at an altitude of 241 metres and covers an area of 4.725km². It has a population of about 603 people....
, Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
and was an ethnic Slovak who was a butcher. His maternal grandparents, ethnic Hungarians of the Calvinist faith
Calvinism
Calvinism is a Protestant theological system and an approach to the Christian life...
, emigrated from Debrecen
Debrecen
Debrecen , is the second largest city in Hungary after Budapest. Debrecen is the regional centre of the Northern Great Plain region and the seat of Hajdú-Bihar county.- Name :...
, Hungary. Gajdusek was born in Yonkers, New York, and graduated in 1943 from the University of Rochester
University of Rochester
The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...
, where he studied physics, biology, chemistry and mathematics. He obtained an M.D.
Doctor of Medicine
Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians. The degree is granted by medical schools...
from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1946 and performed postdoctoral research at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, the California Institute of Technology
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...
, and Harvard. In the early 1950s, Gajdusek was drafted into the military as a research virologist
Virology
Virology is the study of viruses and virus-like agents: their structure, classification and evolution, their ways to infect and exploit cells for virus reproduction, the diseases they cause, the techniques to isolate and culture them, and their use in research and therapy...
at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
Walter Reed Army Medical Center
The Walter Reed Army Medical Center was the United States Army's flagship medical center until 2011. Located on 113 acres in Washington, D.C., it served more than 150,000 active and retired personnel from all branches of the military...
. In 1954 he went to work as a visiting investigator at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research is Australia's oldest medical research institute.In 2011, the institute is home to more than 650 researchers who are working to understand, prevent and treat diseases including blood, breast and ovarian cancers; inflammatory diseases such as...
in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. There, he began the work that culminated in the Nobel prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
.
Kuru
Gajdusek's best-known work focused on kuruKuru (disease)
Kuru is an incurable degenerative neurological disorder that is a type of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, caused by a prion found in humans...
. This disease was rampant among the South Fore people of New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
in the 1950s and 1960s. Gajdusek connected the spread of the disease to the practice of funerary cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
by the South Fore. With elimination of cannibalism, kuru disappeared among the South Fore within a generation.
Gajdusek was introduced to the problem of kuru by Vincent Zigas, a district medical officer in the Fore Tribe region of New Guinea. Gajdusek provided the first medical description of this unique neurological disorder
Neurological disorder
A neurological disorder is a disorder of the body's nervous system. Structural, biochemical or electrical abnormalities in the brain, spinal cord, or in the nerves leading to or from them, can result in symptoms such as paralysis, muscle weakness, poor coordination, loss of sensation, seizures,...
, which was miscast in the popular press as the "laughing sickness" because some patients evinced risus sardonicus
Risus sardonicus
Risus sardonicus is a highly characteristic, abnormal, sustained spasm of the facial muscles that appears to produce grinning.The name of the condition derives from the appearance of raised eyebrows and an open "grin" - which can appear malevolent to the lay observer - displayed by those suffering...
as a symptom. He lived among the Fore, studied their language and culture, and performed autopsies
Autopsy
An autopsy—also known as a post-mortem examination, necropsy , autopsia cadaverum, or obduction—is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present...
on kuru victims.
Gajdusek concluded that kuru was transmitted by the ritualistic consumption of the brains of deceased relatives, which was practiced by the Fore. He then proved this hypothesis by successfully transmitting the disease to primates and demonstrating that it had an unusually long incubation period of several years. This was the first demonstration of the infectious spread of a non-inflammatory degenerative disease in humans.
Kuru was shown to have remarkable similarity with scrapie
Scrapie
Scrapie is a fatal, degenerative disease that affects the nervous systems of sheep and goats. It is one of several transmissible spongiform encephalopathies , which are related to bovine spongiform encephalopathy and chronic wasting disease of deer. Like other spongiform encephalopathies, scrapie...
, a disease of sheep and goats caused by an unconventional infectious agent. Subsequently, additional human agents belonging to the same group were discovered. They include sporadic, familial, and variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. Though Gajdusek was not able to identify the exact biological nature of the infective agent that spreads kuru, further research of scrapie agent by Stanley Prusiner and others led to the identification of rogue proteins called prion
Prion
A prion is an infectious agent composed of protein in a misfolded form. This is in contrast to all other known infectious agents which must contain nucleic acids . The word prion, coined in 1982 by Stanley B. Prusiner, is a portmanteau derived from the words protein and infection...
s as the cause of these diseases.
While Gajdusek's work is generally accepted by the medical community, some have questioned whether cannibalism was still practiced at the time of Gajdusek's research. Willam Arens, an anthropologist known for his criticism of reports of learned cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
, claims that Gajdusek never actually witnessed cannibalism himself. Researchers who worked with the Fore in the 1950s claimed that cannibalism was suppressed in 1948, almost a decade before Gajdusek arrived in New Guinea. Arens further alleges that the stories presented as evidence of Fore cannibalism often contradict each other and contain elements of sexism
Sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
and racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
. According to Arens, the decline of kuru coincided with the arrival of Europeans to the area in 1961, an event that caused many substantial changes in Fore life that could have led to the improvement in health conditions.
In contrast, many other researchers, including Robert Klitzman
Robert Klitzman
Robert Klitzman is an American psychiatrist and bioethicist.He attended Princeton University, where he studied with Clifford Geertz. He then worked for Dr. Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, who had received the Nobel Prize for work on Kuru, a prion disease...
, S. Lindenbaum, R. Glasse, and kuru field researchers at the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research have documented reports that confirm the practice. Gajdusek became head of the laboratories for virological and neurological research at the National Institutes of Health
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...
(NIH) in 1958 and was inducted to the National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
in 1974 in the discipline of microbial biology.
Child molestation conviction
In the course of his research trips in the South Pacific, Gajdusek had brought 56 mostly male children back to live with him in the United States, and provided them with the opportunity to receive high school and college education. He was later accused by one of these, now an adult man, of molesting him as a child.Gajdusek was charged with child molestation in April 1996, based on incriminating entries in his personal diary and statements from a victim. He pleaded guilty in 1997 and, under a plea bargain
Plea bargain
A plea bargain is an agreement in a criminal case whereby the prosecutor offers the defendant the opportunity to plead guilty, usually to a lesser charge or to the original criminal charge with a recommendation of a lighter than the maximum sentence.A plea bargain allows criminal defendants to...
, was sentenced to 12 months in jail. After his release in 1998, he was permitted to serve his five-year unsupervised probation
Probation
Probation literally means testing of behaviour or abilities. In a legal sense, an offender on probation is ordered to follow certain conditions set forth by the court, often under the supervision of a probation officer...
in Europe. He never returned to the United States and lived in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and Tromsø
Tromsø
Tromsø is a city and municipality in Troms county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Tromsø.Tromsø city is the ninth largest urban area in Norway by population, and the seventh largest city in Norway by population...
. Gajdusek's treatment had been denounced from October 1996 as anti-elitist and unduly harsh by controversial Edinburgh University psychologist Chris Brand
Chris Brand
Christopher Richard Brand is an English psychological and psychometric researcher who gained media attention for his controversial statements on race and intelligence and pedophilia. He went to Queen Elizabeth's, Barnet, and is a graduate of The Queen's College, Oxford, and a fellow of Nuffield...
.
The documentary The Genius and the Boys by Bosse Lindquist
Bosse Lindquist
Bosse Lindquist, born in 1954, is a Swedish radio and TV producer and writer who is head of the national radio broadcaster Swedish Radio’s since 2007...
, first shown on BBC Four
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
on June 2, 2009, notes that "seven men testified in confidentiality about Gajdusek having had sex with them when they were boys", that four said "the sex was untroubling" while for three of them "the sex was a shaming, abusive and a violation". One of these boys, the son of a friend and now an adult, appears in the film. Furthermore, Gajdusek openly admits to molesting boys and his approval of incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
. The film tries to understand not only Gajdusek's sexual mores, but also his deeper motivations for science, exploration and life.
Death
Gajdusek died December 12, 2008 in TromsøTromsø
Tromsø is a city and municipality in Troms county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Tromsø.Tromsø city is the ninth largest urban area in Norway by population, and the seventh largest city in Norway by population...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, at the age of 85. He was working and visiting colleagues in Tromsø at the time of his death.
External links
- Gajdusek's autobiography, written at the time of his Nobel Prize
- Carleton Gajdusek: Obituary, Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles TimesThe Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
Current autobiography in Hungarian