Posted on 03/30/2019 11:04:52 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
[Michael] Alpers, now the Professor of International Health at Curtin University in Western Australia... tells me the story of what he found as a young doctor visiting the New Guinea highlands more than 50 years ago... It was in the field, in early 1962, Alpers first met American scientist Carleton Gajdusek, who had by then been studying kuru for several years... Unusually, the paper identified the victims Kigea and Eiru -- as well as Daisey and Georgette -- by name... Two weeks later, the paper appeared in the journal Nature. It identified kuru as a new category of infectious disease that caused degeneration of the brain and nervous system, and was capable of crossing the species barrier. The transmissible agent would later be identified as an infectious, self-propagating protein... it lacked its own genes... was called a prion... the first new pathogen identified in more than a century... According to the Fore's complex belief system, each individual has five souls. After death they travel the country on a farewell tour... The most efficient path to the hereafter is for the body to be eaten... It was the women's responsibility to eat the dead... Although small boys joined in, they were generally excluded after about age 10... some people were less susceptible to the effects of kuru than others. A gene providing elderly survivors of Fore mortuary feasts resistance to kuru was also found to occur across thousands of people from other cultures. This suggested that eating human flesh -- and outbreaks of a kuru-like disease -- had occurred widely in the human past... one of humanity's darker secrets. With kuru having all but vanished, and the mechanism for its spread eradicated, the episode might have disappeared into the annals of curiosity. But then, in the mid-1980s, came "mad cow" disease.
(Excerpt) Read more at cosmosmagazine.com ...
What got this started was the latest reiteration of how those meat-eating Neandertals were cannibals. One comes out every few years. The fact is, Neandertals survived because they threw the best parties — always the smell of meat on the grill, probably including bacon. :^)
Warm Weather Pushed Neanderthals into Cannibalism
Butchered corpses coincide with rapid climate change, researchers discover
Dyani Lewis
March 29, 2019
https://cosmosmagazine.com/archaeology/warm-weather-pushed-neanderthals-into-cannibalism
Oh, my. To quote a line from some movie, some where or another, “I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.”
That’s the closest comment I can think about after reading that information.
Throughout history famine via wars or floods/drought/government induced acts have driven humans to acts of cannibalism and those who resorted to that act lived with what they did...
I literally thank the Lord that I’ve never been in that type of position. It must be a particular Hell having to make that decision....
It must have been an unusual circumstance indeed -- or, as the topic article notes, cannibalism may have been a common practice, and may even have been part of the honoring of the dead, as he terms it, "transumption".
“Warm Weather Pushed Neanderthals into Cannibalism”
Lol.
That nasty global warming again.
I’m pretty cynical about the supposed causes of these diseases and characteristics attributed to prions as infectious agents.
Gajdusek is very problematic.
And then there is...did you hear about the cannibal that passed his friend on the street?
;o]
‘Face
What are the symptoms of kuru?
Symptoms of more common neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease or stroke may resemble kuru symptoms. These include:
difficulty walking
poor coordination
difficulty swallowing
slurred speech
moodiness and behavioral changes
dementia
muscle twitching and tremors
inability to grasp objects
random, compulsive laughing or crying
So Hillary DOES have kuru!!!
And then there’s this ... Did you hear about the cannibal who ate the charismatic missionary? Didn’t taste bad, but he kept throwing up his hands.
Keith Richards with the Rolling Stones?
LOL!
My mother got me started on those subtle puns, and I’ve never lost my appreciation for them. :o])
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