In Papua New Guinea in the 1950s, a strange illness suddenly appeared—once the patient contracted it, he would experience severe tremors, laughter, inability to eat, and other symptoms, and Western scientists went deep into the tribe to find a cure, but in vain. What exactly is this condition? And how do scientists find out the reason from the primeval jungle?
Unusual number of deaths
The story has to start in the 1940s. At that time, the Australian government began to explore the surrounding islands, the most important of which was Papua New Guinea in northern Australia. The expeditions sent by the government spent several years going deep into the jungle tribes and observing them deeply. It was only in 1947 that the scouting team finally discovered the local Fore in the most pristine rainforest.
The scouts originally thought that the Frei would also reject this group of white-skinned outsiders just like the clans they had encountered before. But unexpectedly, the Fury tribe has no obstacle to accepting Western civilization! The tribe welcomed the group of outsiders and patiently accepted the census for several hours.
Soon, the people even abandoned their own cumbersome traditional cultural practices and began to grow coffee, dig toilets, and open shops. The work went smoothly, and soon the team noticed something unusual—that is, the death toll was somewhat unusual.
In 1950, members of the reconnaissance team discovered that the number of dead in some villages was a bit too high, and he reported the symptoms of the locals to his superiors: "The locals seem to suffer from stomach problems, and they will tremble violently like malaria, and they will die quickly." Originally, they didn't pay much attention to it, but as the year passed, more and more people experienced this symptom, especially women and children. After visiting the locals, the tribe said it was a form of witchcraft called Kuru.
A young doctor who plunged headlong into the tribe
"Kuru" means "trembling". According to the patient's condition, the investigator gave the condition an even more frightening name - "Laughing Death Disease". When he tried to relieve a sick woman by applying ointment for muscle pain to relieve her symptoms, the woman immediately twisted her body in pain, but the symptoms did not ease, but she shivered and giggled more violently than before. The locals hurried to persuade him:
Don't use your magic anymore, it can't beat our powerful witchcraft.
Patients who get Kuru disease
As the death toll mounted, the tribe became increasingly agitated. For the Australian government, this is a very dangerous signal: if Western science cannot defeat witchcraft, then the local governing body of hundreds of people will face hundreds of thousands of fearful and angry clansmen.
Therefore, soon Australian scientists began to put forward various hypotheses, such as some people speculated that this was a psychosomatic disorder, because the fear and pressure brought by witchcraft caused the people to really have symptoms such as mental decline and autonomic disorders. Some people say that it is caused by heredity, while others say that it is an infectious disease, and the source of the disease is a certain food eaten by the locals. That's when an American physician, Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, overheard about this mysterious condition—unexpectedly, the news changed his life.
Daniel Gaidusek
In 1957, Gaidusek was doing research in Australia. At the age of 33, he was full of ambition and was bent on finding an important problem to solve, when he learned about "Kuru disease" and thought that this mysterious disease had everything he wanted: primitive jungles, exotic tribes, unknown diseases, explorations and other elements, which were much more fun than doing egg infection experiments in the laboratory! Gedushek wanted to go to the area, but he never expected that he would be hindered by a problem that had nothing to do with medicine: his teachers thought he was an American.
Gaidusek's teacher is a well-known person in Australia, in fact, he has long been dissatisfied that the Australian medical community is always trampled under the feet of Britain and the United States, and has always wanted to find an opportunity to make Australia famous. Although Gedušek was his disciple, he secretly gave this precious opportunity to an Australian virologist. When Gaidusek learned about this, he was so angry that he was biased towards the teacher, but when he found that the virologist who had obtained the God-given opportunity was still discussing his insurance and welfare, the lone Gaidushek immediately took the lead and plunged headlong into the New Guinea rainforest.
The mystery of the weird Kuru syndrome
It was a mysterious dawn scene... The whole beautiful valley is like in Elysium, surrounded by clouds and mist....
Gaidusek's superiors immediately informed Gaidusek: Give me back immediately! But Gaidushek completely ignored it. Since stepping into the rainforest, Gedušek has been fascinated by the pristine landscape in front of him. He watched as the morning clouds slowly rose, followed by the majestic Lamari Valley.
He then began his own research: interviewing tribes, drawing blood for them, saving it, and then sending the data for analysis. In the end, he found from the tissue sections that there was too much direct evidence of nerve damage to be just the psychological effects of the locals. It's a serious neurodegenerative disease, but too many questions still surround it: What exactly causes it? Is this familial inheritance or an infectious disease?
In this regard, the Australian academic community generally believes that this is caused by heredity. At first, Gedušek thought so, but during a conversation with a veterinarian, he learned about a condition he had never heard of: "Scrapie." Sheep infected with this disease would scratch itches by constantly rubbing their bodies against stones or other things, and more importantly, at that time it had been determined that the disease was not a genetic disease, but an infectious disease!
Since both sheep and people have the same symptoms, is it also possible that "Kuru" is an infectious disease?
So, Gaidusek began to study infectious diseases, and he used orangutans and monkeys to do animal experiments. But before everything could be finished, the mystery of Kuru disease in New Guinea was accidentally solved by a couple who were not doctors!
Anthropologists speculate that they eat people
In fact, all this is the result of the Australian government's mistake.
The couple, Glass, are anthropologists from Australia. The Australian government believes that Kuru disease is a genetic disease because the boundaries between local residents and relatives and friends are not obvious, so it hired the anthropologists Grasse and his wife to travel to New Guinea to conduct a detailed genealogical study.
Once there, the Grasses did not record diseases like dragonflies like Gaiduseks, but literally stayed in the local village, endured all kinds of inconveniences of lack of civilization (for which anthropologists are much better than doctors), and spent time talking deeply with the villagers. In the end, they unexpectedly discovered that this condition is actually only more than 50 years old. This proves that Kuru disease is not a genetic disease, but that something happened about 50 years ago, and this event led to the outbreak of Kuru disease.
What really happened 50 years ago?
The Grasses finally found their source, just as the Freys began a new tradition: cannibalism.
"An ancestor passed away. His body was cooked and distributed throughout the region, and everyone ate it and found it to taste amazing. They started thinking, 'Are we crazy? There is such good food here, but I don't know to eat it." Since then, the tribe has begun the tradition of eating the remains of the dead at the time of sacrifice. Since then, their greeting has changed to "I eat you."
Schematic diagram of the cannibal screen
In 1963, the Glasses published this conclusion. But many still do not believe, first of all, for an uncivilized civilization, is the memory of 50 years ago accurate? And the biggest skeptic of it is Gaidusek himself! He does not deny that the Frey have this custom, but believes that the disease is not caused by cannibalism at all.
Instead, he also theorized that Kuru disease may have been caused by cutting a hand during a sacrifice. However, under all the denials, it is actually Gadušek's own selfishness: he has spent so much effort and time on Kuroo's disease, and he really can't accept that the credit for finding the cause was robbed by a pair of Australian anthropologists!
The real murderer is actually related to mad cow disease
But in the end, Gaidushek finally accepted. On the one hand, the evidence presented by the Glasses is indeed difficult to refute because the disease gradually disappeared after the Australian government banned the eating of the dead. On the other hand, he also found that the Glasses, who were anthropologists, did not steal the first effort to discover the cause of Kuru disease. Yes, this disease is caused by cannibalism, but what exactly is the causative agent?
At this time, the chimpanzees that he hit the virus also began to appear good (?) Message: They stumble and walk, trembling, and look like patients with Kuru disease. Gaidushek finally got the evidence: this is an infectious disease!
The next two lines finally join perfectly to form a complete story: "sheep scratch disease" is a disease planted in sheep, caused by a new, difficult-to-eliminate, slow-onset "substance" that is introduced into the human body after an accident that may have occurred in a kitchen or slaughterhouse.
Later, an unfortunate patient died in New Guinea and was eaten by the locals, eventually causing nearly half of the women and children to contract the disease. In the end, Gedušek was awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of "a completely new infectious substance." Unfortunately, he still did not say what the "matter" was.
It wasn't until the 1980s that a man named Prusina proved that it was not a bacterium or a virus, but a misfolded protein, which would cause other proteins to be misfolded and eventually make the animal's brain tissue cavernize. Prusina named it "Prion". The most well-known disease caused by this substance was the mad cow panic in Britain in the 1990s.
The most frightening thing about this "Prizi" for everyone is that it is not a living body, but a protein, so the traditional warming, cooking, and ultraviolet rays of germs cannot be removed. And the incubation period may be as long as ten years, it is impossible to trace the source of the disease, and there is currently no cure for the disease, and the last epidemic that swept across Europe has caused nearly 90 deaths.
Kuru disease causes the brain tissue of animals to become porous and develop into spongy structures
Reflect on the dilemma of scientific research
Although the true culprit of the mystery of Kuru syndrome has been solved, there are more unsolved mysteries in the future, such as under what circumstances is this substance particularly easily triggered? And more important: what can be alleviated and cured of this disease? It's all up to scientists to figure it out.
But this story also shows us a dilemma of scientific research: how should people put aside competition for nations, races, and even individuals in the face of the holy grail of science, and cooperate with each other? Perhaps, this is the most difficult puzzle to solve.
Author's public number: crocodile