D. Carleton GajdusekDeath reported 12 Dec 2008 at age 85 (born 9 Sep 1923).Daniel Carleton Gajdusek was an American physician and virologist whoshared(with Baruch S. Blumberg) the 1976 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine “for their discoveries concerning new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination of infectious dieases.” He identified the cause of kuru, an unusual fatal disease that resulted in a slow degeneration of the brain. He reported that it was was rife among the isolated Fore tribe in New Guinea, who in a funeral ritual honoured their dead by eating their brains. William Hadlow suggested that kuru (Forean for “trembling with fear”) was similar to scrapie in sheep with a years-long incubation period. Gajdusek confirmed this was the mode for the kuru viral infection to spread. He did further work on this a new viral group—the slow-moving virus. In 1997 he was jailed for one year after pleading guilty to child abuse.« |
