Family Man: The Papua New Guinean Children of D. Carleton Gajdusek (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION The name Carleton Gajdusek is familiar to many scholars and those otherwise interested in Pacific anthropology and history. Dr Gajdusek's association with Papua New Guineans began in earnest when he arrived among the Fore people of PNG's Eastern Highlands in 1957. Having heard about 'kuru', a 'shaking' disease that was killing people in this area, he travelled to the region to see the strange disease for himself. What followed has become one of the most compelling stories of modern scientific medicine, one which leads ultimately to Gajdusek's being awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize for medicine for his discovery of 'new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination of infectious diseases' (see http://nobelprize.org/medicine).