DVD review - Kuru - Bundaberg Regional Libraries

DVD Review
Kuru
the science and the sorcery
————————————————
SBS Productions, 52 mins.
Cannibalism, Sorcery, Tribal
Conflict… All the elements needed
to unleash a fatal disease into a
remote New Guinea community, which
still suffers today.
This Medical detective story covers 50
years of a man’s life, and his quest to
uncover the origins of a rare disease.
Adelaide 1957
A young medical student, Michael
Alpers reads in the newspaper about a
strange new illness in a remote
community in PNG called ‘the laughing
death’. Symptoms began with a
headache, then progress through
gradual breakdown of human
function—tremors, twitching, unsteady
movements, difficulty swallowing,
paralysis, until the sufferer is trapped
in their body unable to speak.
Papua New Guinea was at that time a
part of Australian jurisdiction as a
Territory, and many of the more
remote areas were only just being
visited by Australian Patrol Officers for
the very first time. The Fore district in
the Western Highlands was one such
area, and this strange new disease
was only affecting the people of this
area.
Early medical assessment indicated
doctors believed it to be a
psychosomatic disease, brought on by
the stress of contact with white
Australians. However, as statistics
were gathered, it was clear that with
up to 200 women and children dying
each year, it was no imaginary
disease.
Michael Alpers embarked on the equivalent of a
medical detective hunt, looking for the reasons
why only the Fore people were affected. To
better understand the area, he packed up his
wife and child, and in 1961 became the first
Australian medical officer to study Kuru and live
in the Highlands of PNG.
Cannibals and Sorcery
Local tribes in Fore believed that Kuru was the
result of sorcery—sorcery being an accepted fact
in their society to explain why someone would
die unexpectedly, or a crop would fail. Justice
came through revenge killing, which was the
second highest form of death after the Kuru
disease.
With US virologist Carleton Gujdusek, Alpers had
dimissed cannibalism early on as a cause, but
five years down the track, all normal avenues of
medical research had been exhausted, and the
pair began to look at human belief as a possible
cause.
Mad Cows, CJD and Nobel Prizes
Without giving away any more of the story, this
absorbing tale moves on to the BSE (Bovine
Spongiform Encephalopathy) outbreak in
England in 1985, and it’s similarity to the Kuru
disease.
We then have a look at professional jealousies
amongst scientists, and the race for a Nobel
Prize, as well as the ongoing fight by Michael
Alpers to completely eradicate Kuru from the
Fore province of New Guinea.
There’s also an interesting side bar from some
historians about the fine British Navy tradition in
the 17th century of eating ‘long pig’ - just in
case we thought only remote tribes did it…
Fifty years after his first trip to Fore, Michael
Alpers is still visiting and documenting cases of
Kuru, and hopes that “..he’ll be around when
we’re able to say we’ve seen the last case of
Kuru...”
Sue Gammon— All images from “Kuru : the
science and the sorcery”. SBS Productions, 2010.
Available from Bundaberg Regional Libraries.