In the 1950s, a terrifying epidemic struck the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. Victims would suddenly lose coordination, burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter, and inevitably die within months. The locals called it Kuru, the "e;shivering."e; The desperate quest to find the cause led scientists to a shocking cultural practice-and forced them to rewrite the fundamental laws of biology. The Kuru Mystery uncovers one of the most astonishing detective stories in medical history. Anthropologists and epidemiologists eventually realized the disease was transmitted through mortuary cannibalism the ritual eating of deceased relatives' brains. But the true scientific bombshell was the infectious agent itself. It wasn't a virus or a bacterium, but a prion: a bizarre, misfolded protein devoid of DNA that could somehow replicate and turn the brain into a sponge. This book explores the intense skepticism the prion theory faced from the scientific establishment. It traces the dangerous fieldwork in the jungle to the sterile laboratories where Nobel Prize-winning discoveries were made, forever changing our understanding of diseases like Mad Cow and Alzheimer's. Step into the dark intersection of anthropology and neurobiology. Discover how a remote tribal tragedy unlocked the terrifying secret of infectious proteins.

In the 1950s, a terrifying epidemic struck the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. Victims would suddenly lose coordination, burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter, and inevitably die within months. The locals called it Kuru, the "e;shivering."e; The desperate quest to find the cause led scientists to a shocking cultural practice-and forced them to rewrite the fundamental laws of biology. The Kuru Mystery uncovers one of the most astonishing detective stories in medical history. Anthropologists and epidemiologists eventually realized the disease was transmitted through mortuary cannibalism the ritual eating of deceased relatives' brains. But the true scientific bombshell was the infectious agent itself. It wasn't a virus or a bacterium, but a prion: a bizarre, misfolded protein devoid of DNA that could somehow replicate and turn the brain into a sponge. This book explores the intense skepticism the prion theory faced from the scientific establishment. It traces the dangerous fieldwork in the jungle to the sterile laboratories where Nobel Prize-winning discoveries were made, forever changing our understanding of diseases like Mad Cow and Alzheimer's. Step into the dark intersection of anthropology and neurobiology. Discover how a remote tribal tragedy unlocked the terrifying secret of infectious proteins.

In the 1950s, a terrifying epidemic struck the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. Victims would suddenly lose coordination, burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter, and inevitably die within months. The locals called it Kuru, the "e;shivering."e; The desperate quest to find the cause led scientists to a shocking cultural practice-and forced them to rewrite the fundamental laws of biology. The Kuru Mystery uncovers one of the most astonishing detective stories in medical history. Anthropologists and epidemiologists eventually realized the disease was transmitted through mortuary cannibalism the ritual eating of deceased relatives' brains. But the true scientific bombshell was the infectious agent itself. It wasn't a virus or a bacterium, but a prion: a bizarre, misfolded protein devoid of DNA that could somehow replicate and turn the brain into a sponge. This book explores the intense skepticism the prion theory faced from the scientific establishment. It traces the dangerous fieldwork in the jungle to the sterile laboratories where Nobel Prize-winning discoveries were made, forever changing our understanding of diseases like Mad Cow and Alzheimer's. Step into the dark intersection of anthropology and neurobiology. Discover how a remote tribal tragedy unlocked the terrifying secret of infectious proteins.