Correction Cecil!!!!! [Archive] - Straight Dope Message Board

oneidkat

04-29-2005, 04:09 AM

Cites for all your assertations, including Cecils words, please? Provide some reputable links with the information you have imparted.

Ohhhh how I love when someone asks for proof... :rolleyes: I myself do exactly the same when I think there has been a mistake! not so in this case though love because I NEVER open a can of worms without checking ALL relevent info
here is the link to Cecil's comments that I felt the need to correct http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_054.html

Now seeing as we're now entering a more informed debate lets take a look at a few things Cecil said, he suggested that "Many now believe, for instance, that New Guinea natives are not cannibals and that kuru is spread by contact with corpses during funeral preparations" and according to any information I have had the chance to read, those who contract KURU fall into 2 classes of people... (1) cannibals, particularly in the central New Guinea highlands and (2) those who submit to transplant surgery.

Another area of debate regarding cannibalism is whether it may spread infectious diseases. Animal studies have suggested that cannibals may be at greater risk for being infected by parasites and diseases from members of their own species than from other prey. One famous study associated human cannibalism with the spread of a fatal viral disease called Kuru in highland New Guinea. Carlton Gadjusek won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering a new category of viruses called slow viruses, which include Kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob (Mad Cow) disease. Part of Gadjusek's research was based on epidemiological research he did with anthropologists that linked the spread of a Kuru disease to the practice of funerary cannibalism.

Beth Colkin who wrote the book Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society [University of Texas Press] said "William Arens made a valuable contribution in pointing out problems in historical accounts of cannibalism and in sensitizing us to the dangers of negative stereotypes of indigenous people as cannibals," Conklin says. "I have great respect for his work in that regard. But it's going too far to claim that cannibalism never existed at all, because there is substantial evidence that consuming human body parts has been an accepted practice in a number of societies in Europe, South America and elsewhere."

And as for the information that i used to correct Cecil I read quite a few sites but you want something CLASSY perhaps, so will the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC website be considered REPUTABLE??? If so please do go here
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/0410_030410_cannibal.html

I'll even quote the information you're after!!!

"Mead and colleagues began their investigation by looking at the Fore, an isolated indigenous people who live in the mountains of Papua New Guinea. The Fore, according to oral history, had a custom of consuming their dead at mortuary feasts.

The tradition is believed to have begun at the end of the 19th century and persisted until Western settlers abolished the practice in the 1950s. Men ate the best meat, the muscle, while women and children munched the brain.

From approximately 1920 through the 1960s an epidemic of the prion disease kuru swept through the Fore, killing upwards of 200 people a year. One symptom of infection was uncontrollable laughter, which gave the affliction the nickname "laughing disease."

Anyway i do hope I have answered your questions in a manner you approve of... Thank you in advance for reading my post. :D

neuroman

04-29-2005, 03:06 PM

Cecil's words in the original column aren't totally clear to me - I wouldn't necessarily infer that he was denying that laughter can be a symptom of kuru. But thank you for your informative post, oneidkat.

Also, the column about dying from laughter that Cecil refers to in his cannibalism column is this one: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_207.html

Zabali_Clawbane

04-29-2005, 04:07 PM

Ohhhh how I love when someone asks for proof... :rolleyes: I myself do exactly the same when I think there has been a mistake! not so in this case though love because I NEVER open a can of worms without checking ALL relevent info

<snip>

Anyway i do hope I have answered your questions in a manner you approve of... Thank you in advance for reading my post. :D

Take the time to hang out here a little more to figure out the "culture". From the "rolleyes" you gave, I'd infer that you're not aware of the fact that you need to back up your assertations with proof, and if you are going to reference something else from this board, be it from Cecil, or another poster, you need to link to the tread or post in question. Not grouching at you, just letting you know how we do things here. For goodness sake, people ask for cites in the BBQ Pit. Often for such reasons as the OP being so incensed they forgot to link to the thread they were speaking of.

The stated purpose of this message board is "To fight ignorance." If you're going to refute someone, and make many statements of fact, you're going to need to link proof of what you say. Not only is this good for keeping people who don't konw as much as you do on the topic up to speed, but it's courteous too, so people can see your sources of information. :)

Bryan Ekers

04-29-2005, 04:17 PM

Cecil doesn't USE unecessary CAPITALIZATION. That already PUTS him above THE threadstarter, if I may say SO.

Zoe

04-29-2005, 04:46 PM

Welcome to SDMB. Accurate information is always a good thing, but there's really no need to assume an adversarial position in presenting it.

Hang around and acquaint yourself with the routines here. It's worth it!

monkeyfist

04-29-2005, 05:10 PM

oneidkat

05-01-2005, 12:12 AM

Just to make clear the order of events:

Cecil's post that the OP is referring to is from 26-Feb-2001.
The National Geographic article that the OP cites is from April 10, 2003.

It's definitely possible that some of the info your citing was not possible in 2001. With that in mind, I would think a friendlier, "hey, new facts about that laughing disease item have come up..." would be more in line. But hey, if you WANT people to thank you're obnoxious...

Further, there is a distinct difference between outlawing something and abolishing it. I don't claim to know the date of the legal ban on cannibalism, but your cite doesn't actually state it either.

:smack: Its definately possible that in choosing a more recent artical I did my post an injustice. I located many articals, very few were recent, and the National Geographic contained all relevent info and was not very old. Here are some other links to articals written in 2001 and prior with mentions of Kuru being known as the Laughing Sickness, there were dozens but I didn't want to post lots of links, I hope these will do.
http://www.warmwell.com/purdeyseac.html
http://www.nursingceu.com/NCEU/courses/forensics2/

Just with regard to your commenting on the distint difefrence between outlawing & abolishing something, To outlaw something means to declair something illegal... Abolition is the act of formally destroying something through legal means, either by making it illegal, or simply no longer allowing it to exist in any form. To reference that info just go to Google and type Define:outlaw/abolish... Also I am afraid I am not able to locate a date of the actual abolition(sorry for that I thought the year would suffice) however as started in my post and in the National Geographic artical it was in 1950, you can google up several other pages citing the same info.

I do appoligise for my attitude to all of you who brought it up... My bad, big vent and the post came out all wrong... I am an obnoxious little so & so and I do take your critisisms seriously. Zabali Clawbone, thanks for the message about the rolling of eyes, I posted that emoticon right beside where I stated I myself would have asked for documentation as a poke at my idiocy for not posting links, sorry if it seemed directed at you. Bryan Ekers, I used catitalization on relevent information assuming it would be correct to draw attention to those facts. Seems it was a mistake and makes me a lowly poster, thank you for doing the same and making me feel a little less retarded. No sarcasm intended.

oneidkat

05-01-2005, 12:15 AM

For some reason a stray smilie popped up in the post... The sentance should have said define : outlaw/abolish

Crandolph

05-02-2005, 02:10 PM

oneidkat

05-02-2005, 05:39 PM

The claim has been made that evidence of cannibalism in relation to kuru was fabricated.

Cite: G. Kolata, Science 232, 1497 (1986).

I don't think that the relationship beween "slow viruses" and kuru (or some other diseases said to be caused by same) has been uncontraversially established at this point.

I am not quite sute what you mean by that post... Could you elaborate? I shall try to answer as best I can given my understandng of your post. I think I have located your reference... Is this is?

"Kuru" was a fabricated disease concocted to support the "Slow Virus" theory of Carlton Gadjusek. Anthropologists who had studied the same New Guinea tribes as Dr. Gadjusek openly contested his claims of cannibalism and brain disease, as they had lived among these tribes and witnessed no unusual disease called Kuru or any Cannibalism (Science 1986; 232: 1497-1500).

That statement was based on the fact that Gadjusek had not ruled out all possible causes on the transmission of the disease, not that in said disease was 'pretend"... There are some claims that Kur was actually invented by the Japanese...

Covert Testing of Other Disease Agents Mad Cow Disease/Kuru/CJD in the Fore Tribe

Before and during World War II, at the infamous Camp 731 in Manchuria, the Japanese military contaminated prisoners of war with certain disease agents.

They also established a research camp in New Guinea in 1942. There they experimented upon the Fore Indian tribe and inoculated them with a minced-up version of the brains of diseased sheep containing the visna virus which causes "mad cow disease" or Creutzfeldt Jakob disease.

About five or six years later, after the Japanese had been driven out, the poor people of the Fore tribe developed what they called kuru, which was their word for "wasting", and they began to shake, lose their appetites and die. The autopsies revealed that their brains had literally turned to mush. They had contracted "mad cow disease" from the Japanese experiments.

When World War II ended, DR Ishii Shiro -- the medical doctor who was commissioned as a General in the Japanese Army so he could take command of Japan's biological warfare development, testing and deployment -- was captured. He was given the choice of a job with the United States Army or execution as a war criminal. Not surprisingly, DR Ishii Shiro chose to work with the US military to demonstrate how the Japanese had created mad cow disease in the Fore Indian tribe.

In 1957, when the disease was beginning to blossom in full among the Fore people, DR Carleton Gajdusek of the US National Institutes of Health headed to New Guinea to determine how the minced-up brains of the visna-infected sheep affected them. He spent a couple of years there, studying the Fore people, and wrote an extensive report. He won the Nobel Prize for "discovering" kuru disease in the Fore tribe. see http://www.mercola.com/2001/sep/8/mycoplasma.htm

Most information regarding the pathogen of Kuru is predominantly in relation to Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease. Now according to the infomation i was able to search CJD and Kuru are considered to be transmitable diseases, this has been shown by evperiments involving injecting subjects with affected brains. What is a subject of debate is the transmissible agent. here is the link http://www.icomm.ca/geneinfo/cjd.htm containing this information

Virus Or Prion

Initially, the agent was thought to be a slow virus due to the unusually long incubation period, which can be up to forty years, between the time of exposure to the pathogen and the onset of symptoms. Further research, however, has indicated that this agent differs significantly from viruses and other conventional agents. Whereas viruses and other known infectious agents contain nucleic acids which house a cell's genetic material, researchers have been unable to identify any nucleic acids in the CJD agent. Additionally, the chemical and physical procedures that inactivate most viruses have proved ineffective in decreasing the infectivity of the CJD pathogen. In contrast, the procedures that degrade protein have been found to inactivate the pathogen.

Accordingly, a new theory regarding the transmissible agent has emerged and gained widespread acceptability. This theory holds that the transmissible agent is neither a virus nor other previously known infectious agent, but rather an unconventional agent consisting of protein. This newly-discovered pathogen is called a "prion", short for " proteinaceous infectious particle". Prions are thought to transform normal, benign protein molecules into infectious, deadly ones by altering the shape of the healthy molecules to the dangerous conformation. This transformation then induces a chain reaction to alter the shape of the other benign protein molecules into the deadly form.

Other Diseases Caused By Similar Agents

CJD falls within a category of related human and animal diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (“TSE’s”), all of which appear to involve the abnormal prion protein and leave their victims with the characterisitic sponge-like holes in the infected brains. In addition to CJD, the suspected human prion diseases include kuru, Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease and fatal familial insomnia. Kuru has been found only among the Fore tribe in Papua New Guinea and has been virtually eliminated since the cessation of the ritual handling and eating of the brains of deceased relatives. The disease is characterized by progressive problems with coordination which are typically followed by dementia. Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease and fatal familial insomnia are predominantly hereditary disorders with the former usually marked by progressive coordination and movement problems and the latter evidenced by sleeping problems preceding dementia. The suspected prion diseases occurring in animals consist of: scrapie in sheep and goats; transmissible mink encephalopathy; chronic wasting disease of mule deer and elk; feline spongiform encephalopathy; and, bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("BSE"), also known as "mad cow disease". TSE’s have also been found in some exotic zoo animals.

There was never a relationship between kuru or any other diease as stated by you as they were actually believed to be slow diseases... Maybe the relationship was "self"... Anyway science has gone on to show they are not slow diseases and are not classified as prions

oneidkat

05-02-2005, 08:41 PM

just wish to make a quick correction.... the last line in my post has a typo... the las line should read:- "Anyway science has gone on to show they are not slow diseases and are now classified as prions

Crandolph

05-02-2005, 08:52 PM

I don't know how (or if) to reply to all of that, but:

There is debate (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_n1_v22/ai_20577441) about cannibalism in that (and all) societies.

And there is debate (http://www.healtoronto.com/slowvirus.html) over the ability of kuru to be transmitted via brain munching.

Not saying I have the answers to these, but there are some pretty bright people with a lot of experience asking the Qs and I think we just don't know yet on either count.

oneidkat

05-03-2005, 12:47 AM

a) It in only found in the Fore area of Okapa
b) It is one-hundred-percent fatal.
c) 80% of all known cases have been women and children.
d) The entire process of dying is painless with death actually resulting to starvation.

The people of the Fore/Okapa area eat their relatives only and at the point of death - so everything is still nice and warm! Then, instead of eating the meat, the women and children eat the viscera and brains. The men rarely participate at all and, should they do so, they prefer the meat. They believe the dead relative could live on in their bodies in this way.

I am not suggesting it is practiced any longer but I have no doubt that it did occur... Their own verbal history tells of funerary cannibalism but I will have to get back to you on the actual transmision, it is true that as you say it is still widely debated as to the hows and whys but again there are many illnesses in that basket. The one common link that has been proven is the act of cannibalism...

Crandolph

05-03-2005, 01:00 PM

From my second link, above:

In the meantime another crucial, if embarrassing, bit of information has emerged as a challenge to Gajdusek's virus-kuru hypothesis. The published transcript of his Nobel acceptance speech, in a 1977 issue of Science magazine, included a photo ostensibly showing New Guinea natives eating their cannibalistic meal. The photo is not very clear. When colleagues asked Gajdusek if the photo truly showed cannibalism, he admitted the meal was merely roast pork. According to Science, "He never publishes actual pictures of cannibalism, he says, because they are 'too offensive.'" Unconvinced, anthropologist Lyle Steadman of Arizona State University has investigated and directly challenged Gajdusek, claiming "there is no evidence of cannibalism in New Guinea." Steadman, who spent two years doing fieldwork in New Guinea, noted that he often heard tales of cannibalism but when he probed, the evidence evaporated.

Gajdusek, angered by the hint of malfeasance, has insisted that "he has actual photographs of cannibalism, but he would never publish them because they 'so offend the relatives of the people who used to do it.'" This statement contradicts his earlier claims that the tribesman proudly ate their dead relatives out of respect, quitting the practice only in deference to outside pressure from government authorities. For evidence of cannibalism, Gajdusek also cited Australian arrests of tribesmen for the alleged crime - which, as it turned out, were based on hearsay accusations. So perhaps New Guinea natives stand falsely accused of ritual cannibalism.

In addition, few people outside of Gajdusek's original research team have ever personally witnessed kuru victims. This means we also depend on his own descriptions and statistics for our knowledge of the disease itself, particularly since he claims cannibalism and kuru both ceased to exist within a few years after his 1957 trip. Phantom viruses, transmitted through phantom cannibalism, cause phantom disease.

Yet Gajdusek has reshaped the thinking of an entire generation of biologists, his seductive message of slow viruses having landed on eager ears. He and the virus hunters inspired by him have built careers chasing viruses and attributing them to latent periods in order to connect them to noninfectious diseases.

oneidkat

05-03-2005, 06:47 PM

It seems that CJD and Kuru are one and the same according to information i have located... Altho the myth of kuru being a seperate disease remains...

CJD: Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease—This is the human form of the same disease. In New Guinea, the nationals called it Kuru; in the Western world, it is called CJD.

taken from http://www.pathlights.com/onlinebooks/MC1.htm

oneidkat

05-03-2005, 07:13 PM

Causes, incidence, and risk factors:
Kuru is an extremely rare prion disease. It is almost exclusively found among people from New Guinea, who practiced a form of cannibalism in which the brains of dead relatives were eaten as part of a funeral ritual. Kuru causes neurodegenerative changes similar to another prion disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which occurs sporadically around the world and for which risk factors are unknown. taken from here (http://drkoop.com/ency/93/001379.html)

Also I have to correct a post I made in saying Kuru and CJD are one and the same, actually they are not, they are almost identical but Kuru is slightly different and has only ever been found in the Fore people of PNG

I came across this artical at a website that appears to promote getting yourself a "fun disease"... Its really just a bit of fun but again factually interesting... just go to this page (http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/002942.html)

What's the connection between BSE and CJD?

Scrapie, BSE, Kuru and CJD are all spongiform encephalopathies capable of jumping from one species to another. For example, a sheep injected with tissue from a person suffering from CJD will die of scrapie. It seems that scrapie in sheep, BSE in cattle and CJD in humans are one and the same disease. The latest evidence shows that certainly BSE and CJD are the same. We have known for years that humans can catch a form of BSE by eating infected food - that's clear from studies of the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea. Cannibalism, especially amongst women hoping to increase their fertility, was common until very recently. In some villages, up to 80 per cent of these women died from a spongiform disease called kuru. It was first thought that kuru was inherited genetically but it has now been shown that it is an infection caused by eating the brains of dead relatives.

What we now have in Britain is essentially a new form of kuru which is showing similar symptoms - loss of co-ordination, memory loss and slurred speech eventually developing into muscle twitching, stumbling and falling over. Once the symptoms show themselves they advance rapidly and over a period of weeks the person becomes depressed, confused and unaware, unable to read or recognise even close relatives.

Towards the end, the patient is unconscious and often has fits or jerking spasms, is doubly incontinent, blind, deaf and speechless. Death usually comes about through lung or other infections.

When a post mortem is carried out, extreme care has to be taken because the disease is highly infectious. Pathologist wear a mask, goggles, gloves, boots and a plastic apron and any instruments have to be thoroughly sterilised. For example, the silver needles used for the EEG (brain examination) must be treated with high pressure steam for prolonged periods of time or put through six successive heat cycles in a sterilizer. Even then there is no guarantee of destroying the infection. If contaminated instruments are used on another patient, the disease can, and indeed has been, transferred.

CJD is so feared by some people in the medical profession that they have refused to perform post mortems where CJD is suspected. Some hospitals have even refused to admit patients suffering from it.
I located this info here (http://www.viva.org.uk/guides/hownowmadcow.htm) .

Crandolph

05-03-2005, 07:37 PM

CJD appears to happen primarily in Westerners who have already had brain surgery. That's not a particularly successful transmission route for a specific virus.

One of my links noted that "most," not all, of the kuru victims were Fore.

In any event, Gajdusek was never able to locate a virus and was only able to cause deterioration in monkey brains by drilling holes in their heads and introducing a brain slurry. Sounds like the sort of thing that could cause brain damage without needing an exotic 'slow virus.' He apparently wasn't able to transmit neurological damage by feeding monkeys infected (presumably, because he didn't have a virus) tissue.

samclem

05-03-2005, 08:08 PM

CJD appears to happen primarily in Westerners who have already had brain surgery. .
I'm sorry if I haven't read along very well, but where does this fact come from?

Crandolph

05-04-2005, 10:16 AM

I'm sorry if I haven't read along very well, but where does this fact come from?

That is, again, from the second link, authored by virologists Duesberg and Ellison:

They listened uncritically when he [Gajdusek] claimed a similar unconventional virus caused Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, a rare brain disorder that seems to strike mostly Westerners having undergone previous brain surgery (obviously such medical operations might well be suspected as the real cause).

oneidkat

05-04-2005, 06:49 PM

About 5 to 10 percent of all CJD cases are inherited. These cases arise from a mutation, or change, in the gene that controls formation of the normal prion protein. While prions themselves do not contain genetic information and do not require genes to reproduce themselves, infectious prions can arise if a mutation occurs in the gene for the body’s normal prion protein. <snip>

CJD cannot be transmitted through the air or through touching or most other forms of casual contact. Spouses and other household members of sporadic CJD patients have no higher risk of contracting the disease than the general population. However, exposure to brain tissue and spinal cord fluid from infected patients should be avoided to prevent transmission of the disease through these materials. <snip>

Since 1985, all human growth hormone used in the United States has been synthesized by recombinant DNA procedures, which eliminates the risk of transmitting CJD by this route.

The appearance of the new variant of CJD (nv-CJD or v-CJD) in several younger than average people in Great Britain and France has led to concern that BSE may be transmitted to humans through consumption of contaminated beef. Although laboratory tests have shown a strong similarity between the prions causing BSE and v-CJD, there is no direct proof to support this theory.

Many people are concerned that it may be possible to transmit CJD through blood and related blood products such as plasma. <snip>They do know that, even though millions of people receive blood transfusions each year, there are no reported cases of someone contracting CJD from a transfusion.
This came from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders (http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/cjd/detail_cjd.htm#24133058)

Crandolph

05-04-2005, 07:54 PM

We seem to be jumping between slow viruses and prions in explaining both diseases. Gotta pick one.

At the very least in the case of the virus, I don't know that any actual viral agent was ever located for either. I'm not 100% sure that CJD has been conclusively linked to prions either; my (admittedly limited) understanding is that this is still some cutting edge material which is still under debate.

In any event, Gajdusek went with the virus when studying kuru and prions never entered his experiments. If you want to use kuru as a proof of cannibalism (which is what this was all getting at, hard to recall at this point... ;) )
, you have to both prove that Gajdusek had found a viral agent (or otherwise infected tissue), and that it it could be transmitted by eating infected tissue. To my knowledge no one has done that.

samclem

05-04-2005, 08:56 PM

oneidcat. You can't just copy huge passages and paste them here. That's copyright infringement and it's illegal. The Chicago Reader(our Host) hopes that people don't lift material from them, and they don't want us lifting chunks from others.

I probably should have pruned your post even more, but it's hard to do without losing the ideas.

samclem, GQ moderator

JillGat

05-04-2005, 10:08 PM

That is, again, from the second link, authored by virologists Duesberg and Ellison:

Duesberg is the quack who for years has been promoting the theory that HIV does not cause AIDS. The article you cited is littered with utter falsehoods.

Crandolph

05-05-2005, 12:18 PM

Duesberg is the quack

Duesburg is pretty much considered the father of retrovirology:

Peter H. Duesberg, Ph.D. is a professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He isolated the first cancer gene through his work on retroviruses in 1970, and mapped the genetic structure of these viruses. This, and his subsequent work in the same field, resulted in his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. He was also the recipient of a seven-year Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Institute of Health.

You can disagree with the man, but I think "quack" is a bit excessive. There was a second author of the article as well, one Ellison; also a 'quack?'

The article you cited is littered with utter falsehoods.

Such as..?

RM Mentock

05-05-2005, 12:26 PM

Kary Mullis, the guy who got the Nobel for PCR, also promoted that theory. Mullis is crazy, though. :)

JillGat

05-05-2005, 11:18 PM

Duesburg is pretty much considered the father of retrovirology:

You can disagree with the man, but I think "quack" is a bit excessive. There was a second author of the article as well, one Ellison; also a 'quack?'

Such as..?

Duesberg's theories about HIV and AIDS have been universally opposed by medical experts. He is not a medical doctor and does not treat patients. I say he is a quack because he has encouraged people with HIV to stop taking their medications and has disputed the known risks for HIV infection. There are a number of inaccuracies in the article you cited, but most importantly, here is the evidence that HIV infection causes AIDS. http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/evidhiv.htm

Crandolph

05-06-2005, 01:40 PM

My understanding is that MDs get their info on how viruses operate from researchers, not the other way around.

I'm quite sure that Duesberg, Mullis and others - and these are people who have received the highest possible accolades in the field of research, they're not exactly newbies or pikers - would have some things to say about some of the info in that link, particularly the use of "new technologies" to stretch Koch's postulates in a more inclusive direction. Regardless, we haven't been discussing HIV, but kuru, and even if Duesberg were wrong about one he could be right about the other. If you throw away everything the man says about virology in an ad hominem fashion, it really doesn't help science.

In general Duesberg has been highly critical of slow virus theory, and has used a lot of examples in his writing of when "virus hunters" have been wrong, such as was the case with pellagra (http://www.fooddoc.com/NFS%20708/goldberger.htm) and a 1970s "outbreak" of a "rare virus" in Japan which turned out to be a bad batch of over the counter digestive medicine (epidemiology alone in both cases suggested a germ.)

The combination of criticism from both prominent bio researchers and at least one anthropologist familiar with PNG specifically leads me to have some serious doubts as to what kuru was and what caused it.

JillGat

05-06-2005, 03:43 PM

I don't mean to hijack this thread into an AIDS debate. But I have to question the use of Peter Duesberg as a source for anything. He is yet another "expert" who irresponsibly speaks outside his area of expertise (not unlike Linus Pauling, - the only winner of two, unshared Nobel Prizes - claiming that a megadose of Vitamin C cures the common cold). Duesberg's principal research has been in cancer-causing retroviruses in chickens. I don't know what experience he has in Kuru, but he has little, if any, experience in epidemiology or clinical pathology and no experience in HIV/AIDS.

Duesberg's theory that AIDS is caused by by recreational drug use and "promiscuous" sexual behavior and not caused by HIV infection is ridiculous and considered unsupportable by virtually the entire scientific community. The evidence that HIV causes AIDS is simply irrefutable and his continuing to shrilly deny this is bizarre and reckless. Yes, he was a respected researcher before he proposed his AIDS theories, but at this point I am dubious about just about anything he says.

monkeyfist

05-07-2005, 11:37 AM

Just with regard to your commenting on the distint difefrence between outlawing & abolishing something, To outlaw something means to declair something illegal... Abolition is the act of formally destroying something through legal means, either by making it illegal, or simply no longer allowing it to exist in any form. To reference that info just go to Google and type Define:outlaw/abolish...

Um, nope. Dictionary.com and several other definition sites define Abolish as "To do away with; annul. To destroy completely." Outlawing something almost universally implies a matter of legality. thus the term law .

You can try to abolish "something" through the use of laws, thereby outlawing it and making it illegal. But making "something" illegal does not necessarily abolish it. "It" can, and many times does, continue to happen illegally. At the point that "it" no longer happens, it is then abolished.

E.g.:

Recreational alcohol consumption was made illegal in the US by the 21st amendment to the Constitution. From 1920 to 1933, it was outlawed. However, it was never successfully abolished.

Further, the overwhelming success and growth of a small number of fast food franchises have nearly abolished the variety of mom and pop burger joints that existed in the 50's. We know, however, that the mom and pop burger stands were never made illegal or outlawed.

So, when you state in the OP that cannibalism was “out lawed [sic] in 1950” and your cited source states that,” Western settlers abolished the practice in the 1950s” you are incorrectly using your source. It is possible that, as Cecil stated, the practice was outlawed long before the 1950’s, but that it was not abolished until the more constant contact of the western settlers in the 1950’s.

All of this, however, is a rather moot point, because it appears that the very existence of any sort of cannibalism and the “laughing” disease are now, and have been since as far back as 1986, a highly debatable topic by the experts. It would appear then, that Cecil was very well supported (factually speaking) when he dismissed the notion of kuru caused by cannibalism in the FORE people.
So when you come around, four years after Cecil’s posting, and call him, “Mr Talk-Alot-But-Know-Little” and then state “It costs nothing to ensure you have the correct facts so I suggest you take advantage of that freedom in future!” maybe you should take your own advice “ :wally “.

Crandolph

05-09-2005, 06:18 PM

I don't mean to hijack this thread into an AIDS debate. ...

Well, OK then, I don't want to do that either. At the same time, I think that this is yet another forum where Duesberg is getting a raw deal.

He is speaking quite well within his area of expertise when he offers opinions on retroviruses in part because he has been so involved in genetic mapping of them since the 1960s and has been a major pioneer in the field. Part of his arguments against some of the supposition as to what HIV, kuru etc. can do is that he doesn't see how they have enough genetic information to have such complex and elaborate powers. His work with suspected cancer-causing retroviruses has also led him to question their destructive capabilities, in part because lines of cancer cells were replicating rapidly with retroviral passengers, not dying.

I think a lot of the criticism of Duesberg has been from an oversimplification of his AIDS theory. In brief, he thinks that there are actually a number of different factors causing many people to have various diseases which have been lumped into one faulty AIDS category, for which reason he thinks one magic bullet cure for all of them can't be found.

One problem he sees is people having repeated STD and related infections and overrelying on anti-biotics to counter them, thus undermining the immune system.

Another is a combination of drug abuse and STDs causing the same.

Another is "iatrogenic AIDS," caused by giving otherwise pretty healthy people large doses of protease chain terminators such as AZT (a failed chemo drug), whose effects are difficult to tell from other wasting diseases.

He suspects that much of the wasting and stunting in Africa is from a combination of infections and malnutrition, both of which tale their tolls on the immune system.

Having read his book (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0895264706/002-4712908-6042423?v=glance) I'd say we're dealing with a very careful scientist who is very much concerned with bad science causing people to take unnecessary and possibly harmful medications. His career has suffered incredibly for that.

Now, no one has to agree with the guy, but dismissing everything he has to say without considering it carefully doesn't seem very scientific to me. I'd also point out that there are dozens of virus experts (http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/group.htm) in the world who have agreed with Duesberg on many or most of his points. They are a minority, but not as best as I can see not all a bunch of quacks.

It has, in fact, been Duesberg's nemeses Gajdusek and Dr. Robert Gallo (the supposed discoverer of HIV; he appears to have stolen the work of Dr. Luc Montaigner's lab at the Pasteur Institute) who have had to answer critics who have accused them of scientific fraud.

JillGat

05-10-2005, 09:44 AM

From the "virusmyth" website you linked to: [[A growing group of bio-medical scientists claim the cause of AIDS is still unknown. These heretics do not believe in the lethal AIDS virus called HIV. They claim that the virus is indeed harmless. Most of them think AIDS is also not sexually transmitted; it probably has toxic causes. People die because they are poisoned to death by toxic antiviral drugs. Part of the AIDS dissidents even question the existence of a virus entity. These HIV skeptics say that the AIDS virus has never really been isolated, and the AIDS tests are worthless...]] (They are describing themselves in this introductory paragraph)

This kind of paranoid, illogical thinking has caused some people infected with HIV to avoid treatment with the effective new therapies, and that is tragic and unconscionable. I am a clinical researcher, currently conducting a trial of a new class of HIV drugs. The fact that the combination of highly active antiretroviral drugs - specifically designed to block the lifecycle of HIV in the body - have dramatically improved quality and quantity of life of those who are infected with HIV makes it fairly obvious that HIV is the culprit. I think Duesberg and his promoters would be laughable if they weren't so dangerous.

It's also interesting that you completely dismiss the contributions of Robert Gallo in your post...

Okay, in the interest of turning this thread back to the topic of Kuru, I'll drop this point and let you carry on. - Jill

Crandolph

05-10-2005, 11:11 AM

It's also interesting that you completely dismiss the contributions of Robert Gallo in your post...

Well, Gallo has faced changes of fraud (http://www.healtoronto.com/gallodocs.html) (I know the link is to a biased source, but the collection of source docs is convenient). Aside from all of that he also faced a lawsuit from a grad student who also claims he stole work. Yet Gallo has received millions in funding since all of this, while Dueberg, who at least no one has accused of fraud, can't get a grant any longer (he's had at least 9 grant applications turned down).

This (http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/cjinterviewep.htm) is also quite interesting:

By 1984 Gallo had already spent more than a decade researching retroviruses and cancer. He was one of the many virologists caught up in President Nixon's decade of war against cancer. In the mid 1970s Gallo claimed to have discovered the first human retrovirus in patients with leukaemia. He claimed his data proved the existence of a retrovirus which he called HL23V.(11,21) Now, just like he would later do for HIV, Gallo used antibody reactions to "prove" which proteins in the cultures were viral proteins. And not long afterwards others claimed to have found the same antibodies in many people who did not have leukaemia. However, a few years after that these same antibodies were shown to occur naturally and be directed against many substances that had nothing to do with retroviruses.(22,23) Then it was realised that HL23V was a big mistake. There was no HL23V retrovirus. So the Gallo data turned out to be an embarrassment and HL23V is now extinct. What’s interesting for us though is that the evidence used to claim proof of the existence of HL23V is the same kind of evidence said to prove the existence of HIV. In fact the evidence for HL23V was better than HIV.

Chronos

05-10-2005, 01:33 PM

Lots of people have gone to trial, many of them undeservedly. Unless you have something about the results of those trials, I'd have to consider them completely irrelevant.

And in addition to anti-virus therapies being effective against AIDS, there's also the problem that the transmission of the disease is consistent with a single virus being the culprit, and not consistent with it being caused by overload of other diseases or excessive medication. If overload of other diseases or of non-AIDS medication were the cause, then one would expect to see the disease spontaneously arise independently in separated places and populations, which we don't, and the notion that it's caused by the very medications used to treat AIDS is ludicrous, both because people don't start taking anti-AIDS medication until they have AIDS, and because people with AIDS who take medication for it fare better than those with the disease who do not.

Further, AIDS is known to be transmissable via medical transfusion and through the placenta from a mother to fetus. There was even a case some years back of an AIDS-infected dentist who deliberately infected several of his patients by injecting them with HIV. What cause other than a virus or other germ could explain these routes of transmission?

Crandolph

05-11-2005, 08:21 PM

Lots of people have gone to trial, many of them undeservedly. Unless you have something about the results of those trials, I'd have to consider them completely irrelevant.

This (http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/13911;jsessionid=baa_tS7KaIY0QZ) sort of thing strikes me as relevant. Personal preference, of course.

And in addition to anti-virus therapies being effective against AIDS

Actually it appears in many cases that protease chain terminators, especially AZT, certainly made people violently ill and may have killed.

not consistent with it being caused by overload of other diseases or excessive medication

There are quite a few observations that the wasting associated with AZT was consistent with what one would expect from massive doses of chemo, which is exactly what the drug was invented for. In previous years the latency period between HIV infection and AIDS was thought to be as little as 6 months (the theory has grown this period longer and longer as HIV+ folks have been living for decades now; the latency period is now assumed to be 20 years or more) and people were just dosed as a 'last-ditch effort' which I suspect may have done some people in. No matter what actually kills you, you're an "AIDS death" if you were HIV positive.

That brings us to the other problematic part of this statement; by definition AIDS is not a disease itself, but one or more diseases in addition to being positive for HIV antibodies. Most of those diseases can only be obtained (say herpes or TB) by contact with that germ regardless as to whether the individual is HIV positive or not. Everyone agrees on that much.

one would expect to see the disease spontaneously arise independently in separated places and populations, which we don't

That's precisely what happens. In fact the lists of component definitional diseases differ between, say, the US and Africa even though they are said to be the same illness which should be treated with the same medicine.

the notion that it's caused by the very medications used to treat AIDS is ludicrous, both because people don't start taking anti-AIDS medication until they have AIDS

This isn't at all true! As noted, for example, in the link JillGat provided, we dose people with anti-retrovirals after a needle stick long before anyone even does an HIV test. We've also been dosing people with no more than swollen lymph nodes or a garden variety yeast infection (or not even) for years now.

People have certainly been doing better since the go-for-broke AZT dosing has stopped. That data can be interpreted in a number of ways.

Further, AIDS is known to be transmissable via medical transfusion and through the placenta from a mother to fetus

Certainly HIV is, and Duesberg doesn't argue that the least little bit (he has in fact argued that as a passenger RNA unit, a certain % of the population will test positive from birth). We've also been experimenting with giving anti-retrovirals to fetuses in the womb via dosing their sick mothers.

There was even a case some years back of an AIDS-infected dentist who deliberately infected several of his patients by injecting them with HIV

Do you mean Dr. David Acer in Florida? I don't well know how he was able to inject people "with HIV" in 1989 in that no one had isolated said virus at the time (has anyone done that now? We've mainly been dealing with viral fragments and presumably infected tissue; reading the Perth Group materials on this front is most interesting). It appears that those who investigated the case (http://www.aegis.com/news/mh/1991/mh910610.html) still aren't sure what transpired.

Even then we're talking about "almost identical" viruses in 5 of the 7 cases (the assumption seems to be 2 patients obtained positive results to HIV antibodies in some other fashion). I don't know what "almost identical" means, but presumably like all viruses HIV would be on a fairly short leash in terms of genetic mutation in order to remain viable. As I understand it, we're still doing HIV tests based in cell cultures collected over 20 years ago.

You'll likely poo-poo this link (http://www.aliveandwell.org/html/rethinking/rethinkfaqkimberg.html) out of hand, but it's an interesting amount of info on the famously related Kimberly Bergalis case. Apparently she also became severely anemic in the course of her treatment, which isn't usually ascribed to HIV.

In general there a quite a few very bright, experienced people who have questioned a lot of the HIV research and we shouldn't toss everything they have to say out the window.

JillGat

05-11-2005, 08:41 PM

I said I'd bow out, but I feel compelled to comment here that there are a number of errors and extreme over-simplifications in Crandolf's post about HIV/AIDS. Example: In previous years the latency period between HIV infection and AIDS was thought to be as little as 6 months (the theory has grown this period longer and longer as HIV+ folks have been living for decades now; the latency period is now assumed to be 20 years or more) Huh??

And the Florida dentist, Dr. Acer, didn't have to "isolate" the virus to inject someone else with it. He could have simply used his own blood, which is what he most likely did.

I could argue with Crandolf's post sentence by sentence, but - again - it diverges from the point of this thread and I'm not going to waste the time. Crandolf - even more than Duesberg - is clearly speaking way outside his area of expertise here.

Jill

JillGat

05-11-2005, 08:49 PM

Whoa, one more thing:

Crandolf: This isn't at all true! As noted, for example, in the link JillGat provided, we dose people with anti-retrovirals after a needle stick long before anyone even does an HIV test. We've also been dosing people with no more than swollen lymph nodes or a garden variety yeast infection (or not even) for years now.

"We"? Who is "we"? Do you even know what the criteria is for beginning antiretroviral therapy in people with HIV disease?

And re. HIV tests being "based in cell cultures from 20 years ago"... have you heard of phenotyping and genotyping? Etc?

I'm sorry, but this is dangerous bullshit to be posting on a site that is supposed to be dedicated to the straight dope. Please go to www.cdc.gov and http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu for more information on HIV/AIDS.

monkeyfist

05-11-2005, 10:58 PM

I don't mean to hijack this thread into an AIDS debate.

Well, OK then, I don't want to do that either.

Yeah, wouldn't want to hi-jack a thread... Start a new thread maybe?

Crandolph

05-12-2005, 03:14 AM

That'd be Crandolph with a -ph.

The thread diverged in this direction because I referenced a kuru criticism from a piece co-authored by Dr. Duesberg, who was dismissed out of hand as a quack. I think this is unfair to Duesberg, and beyond that not a very good way to do science. (No one has touched the fact that Steadman's anthropological criticism of the kuru hypothesis would seem to complement Duesberg and Ellison's criticism of same.)

The exact words used to criticize Duesberg seem to be putting words in his mouth or thoughts in his head that I haven't seen expressed by him. I wanted to clear that up as best I could.

"We" references our society. "We give people X medication." is a similar sentence to "We keep cats as pets." or "We trade money for goods and services." I don't understand the problem there.

I'm not going to pretend to know the precise current proscribed protocol under which people are supposed to be getting anti-retrovirals in May 2005 in the US. I will say that I know this has changed over the past 25 years depending on factors such as what country you're in, what drugs were invented or reassigned to HIV at the time, which diseases comprised the component list of AIDS-defining (this list has been periodically expanded by the CDC in the US, and the list compiled by WHO for the Third World is strikingly different) at the time, and so forth. There have even been many cases in which people were taking anti-retrovirals for years before subsequent testing had them turning up HIV-negative (http://www.whatisaids.com/wwwboard/messages/44.html) (link to a few instances that made the news). Presumably there's no logical way that these people could have "had AIDS" before taking the meds if we assume that HIV is causal. As I noted before, fetuses are getting anti-retrovirals in utero. A blanket statement such as "people don't start taking anti-AIDS medication until they have AIDS" is demonstrably false, and certainly hasn't been true in all cases over the past couple of decades. And it is even directly contradicted in one of the links posted to contradict Duesberg's assertions (needle sticks).

As noted in the link I posted on the Acer case, the people who investigated it most closely reached no conclusions as to what happened. We just don't know what any presumed route of transmission was. I don't think that my pointing this out constitutes "dangerous bullshit." Making the positive assertion that "a dentist" was injecting people "with HIV" when we can't say for certain what transpired seems to be sloppier fact reporting than what I've done. (One wonders how Acer kept the virus alive if he injected people with his blood if the virus can't survive outside of the body for more than tiny amounts of time. The CDC appears to estimate a 1 in 3000 chance of becoming infected via needle stick at that.)

As far as the latency period "Huh??": if you look at the assumptions about HIV in mainstream medical lit, both the formal scientific papers and the public health materials drawn from that, the length of time a person could expect to live before the onset of AIDS (without medication) has grown quite a bit between the 1980s and now. In the '80s you were pretty well handed a death sentence within a couple of years (hence the aggressive AZT treatments), now the literature claims you go possibly go a couple of decades before becoming ill.

I don't necessarily have to have extensive virology credentials to understand the patient explanations in the popular science writing done by respected researchers such as Drs. Mullis, Duesberg and Papadopulos-Eleopulos have been doing for years. If we're going to start getting high and mighty about "posting on a site that is supposed to be dedicated to the straight dope," we could stop using "appeal to authority" argument against me (not meaning this as a put-down - honestly - but is anyone posting here in any position to use this on Nobel laureate Mullis or Nat'l Academy of Science member Duesberg?) and "ad hominem" against anything Duesberg says.

Xiphos

05-12-2005, 07:30 AM

As far as the latency period "Huh??": if you look at the assumptions about HIV in mainstream medical lit, both the formal scientific papers and the public health materials drawn from that, the length of time a person could expect to live before the onset of AIDS (without medication) has grown quite a bit between the 1980s and now. In the '80s you were pretty well handed a death sentence within a couple of years (hence the aggressive AZT treatments), now the literature claims you go possibly go a couple of decades before becoming ill.

As I recall, the latency periods quoted are not from HIV to AIDS but from AIDS to death and the main reason this has increased is the improved medication

JillGat

05-12-2005, 09:56 AM

My frustration - leading to the phrase: "dangerous bullshit" - is that some of the misstatements and over-simplifications (and some of the questionable internet links) made in earlier posts lead to the kind of thinking that causes some people with HIV to avoid or delay treatment with drug therapies that can be life-saving. It is a frightening diagnosis, still, and some people, when faced with it, grasp for anything that might refute the common wisdom (that this is an incurable and infectious viral infection, but there is treatment that can prolong and improve quality of life for those infected).

I have worked in HIV/AIDS (as an educator, community organizer, epidemiologist for many years - in the Caribbean and in the US - and now as a clinical researcher) since the beginning of the epidemic. I watched ten people drop dead a day in the early 1980s in the US and now see many fewer deaths and many infected people on medication who are living quality lives. One of the earlier studies I worked on analyzed the reasons why infected persons delay testing and treatment, and - especially now - these are delays we really want to avoid.

HIV is not "latent" for 20 years. People progress at various rates to symptomatic illness, but the virus is more or less active from the time of infection. People with HIV usually are not treated with highly active antiretroviral therapies (which have become much more effective, better tolerated and easier to take than in the past) until their CD4 counts drop to 350 or below or the patient is symptomatic (not just with a yeast infection). Almost everyone infected with HIV becomes ill way before 20 years.

It would not be that difficult to take a syringe of HIV-infected blood and to infect another person, which Acer is theorized to have done. This cannot be compared to statistics on infections from occupational exposure via accidental needlesticks for a variety of probably obvious reasons (whether there is blood - and how much - in the needle, likelihood that subject patient is infected with HIV, type of needle, type of accidental injury, etc. etc.). When a health care provider is "dosed" (as Crandolph calls it) following such an injury, it is not for HIV treatment, but for prophylaxis (to prevent infection). These are very different things. The data show that preventive treatment with antiretroviral meds is pretty effective. Treating pregnant women with antiretroviral drugs is also highly effective at preventing transmission from mother to child.

The fact is that a LOT is known about HIV; the virus and what it does once it gets inside a human body. Although we probably aren't close to a vaccine or a cure, more is learned all the time about how to interrupt the lifecycle of HIV in the body. When I hear people say, "we don't know that much about this," it sounds a little to me like the kind of talk you hear from anti-evolution people.

I could dispute or present evidence to counter other points made earlier in this thread, but I think most people know or have access to this information. My concern is that some of the inaccuracies posted here can lead to confusion at best and a delay in seeking care for those infected at worst.

Xiphos

05-12-2005, 10:22 AM

Arnold Winkelried

05-12-2005, 11:27 AM

This is all interesting information. However, I think that the debate on AIDS can and probably should continue in another forum.

picunurse

05-14-2005, 07:46 AM

Crandolph

05-14-2005, 05:15 PM

I, for one, am very skeptical of your cites. Both have parent sites that are rather close to the fringe if not hanging right over the edge.
Don't believe everything you read... I'm just sayin'

Thank you for that. "I normally believe everything I read." ( :confused: Isn't the alleged problem here supposed to be that I haven't been believing everything I've read?)

There are plenty of hard copy resources which lay out the questions people have asked about kuru from both anthropological and biological standpoints. I just linked to some of the same info online as was convenient. Throwing out all of the info on a website out of hand is as bad as accepting all of it without question from a logical standpoint.

JillGat

05-14-2005, 07:20 PM

JillGat

05-14-2005, 07:27 PM

... although you can find convincing arguments on the internet against most "accepted" theories. For example, the Flat Earth Society (http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm)

Crandolph

05-14-2005, 09:13 PM

Looking at all the legitimate sources I have on communicable disease, kuru is pretty much accepted by experts in the field to be spread by ritual cannabilism, and cases are/were limited to that one tribe in New Guinea that practiced this. When they stopped, cases went down.

http://www.who.int/zoonoses/diseases/prion_diseases/en/

That link says the following (and nothing else) about kuru:

Kuru was known as a human TSE in a restricted area of Papua New Guinea with a prevalence as high as 2% in some tribes. It is now found rarely. No evidence indicates spread of kuru by any other mechanism except by ritual cannibalism.

Some tribes, plural. So that makes two links referenced in this thread which indicate through use of the plural that kuru was evident in more than one tribe. I've read that Gajdusek is the only person who claims to have had kuru samples (without isloating a virus) and the only westerner to claim to have any evidence (which he doesn't share with anyone, substituting photos of pork eating) of cannibalism. Absent any competition, seeing as the disease has apparently now disappeared, I'm not surprised that this has made it into standard references in an abbeviated form without mention of contraversy.

Are we saying that the anthropologist Steadman is also a quack (or whatever the equivalent term is for someone in his field)?

JillGat

05-15-2005, 12:49 AM

Look it up in the "Control of Communicable Diseases" manual, an official report of the American Public Health Association that is updated every five years or so. There is a big editorial board of international experts involved in the compilation of this book, which is considered a bible in the field. I would trust this source more than most of the websites you have linked to. In this book, kuru is described and it says that it occurred among women and children of the Fore language group (so I suppose that could be more than one tribe, I don't know). It says that kuru was transmitted by traditional burial practices involving intimate contact with infected tissues and included cannabilism. There is no mention of any debate about other causes. I have found descriptions of kuru and what is known about its cause and spread in other books about epidemiology and communicable diseases and none of them mention other theories. So unless it's a conspiracy or something.....

scm1001

05-23-2005, 04:19 AM

I've read that Gajdusek is the only person who claims to have had kuru samples (without isloating a virus) and the only westerner to claim to have any evidence (which he doesn't share with anyone, substituting photos of pork eating) of cannibalism.

I am not an expert in any of these areas, but have enjoyed the slightly confusing debate. I will just interfect with the fact that the tribe in concern seems to have been studied quite widely by anthropologists, and that cannabilism has been widely reported by the tribe itself.

"Anthropological evidence gathered in 1962 by Glasse and Lindenbaum indicated
that kuru was of recent origin and that many people could provide vivid
accounts of their first encounter with the disease. According to the Fore, kuru first
entered the Fore region from the north some time in the early 1920s, arriving in the South Fore in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and in some border areas as late asthe 1940s (Glasse 1962). Ethnographic research also suggested that the arrival of kuru was related to the earlier adoption of the consumption of deceased relatives, which began in the north at the turn of the century, and at later moments in thesouth (Glasse 1963, 1967, Lindenbaum 1979). Accounts of the consumption ofthe first kuru victims in a certain location also described cases some years later among those who had eaten the victim (Mathews et al 1968, Klitzman et al 1984)".

from arjournals.annualreviews.org/ doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.anthro.30.1.363 (pdf)