Word: gajdusek
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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What do these diseases of man and beast have in common? Probably, says Dr. D. Carleton Gajdusek, a top researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness, they are all caused by extraordinarily slow-acting viruses-none of which has yet been definitely seen, even with the electron microscope...
Short Tests. To formulate such a theory, admits Gajdusek, is to call into question much of the traditional thinking of virologists. Generations of researchers have been accustomed to thinking of viruses as microbes that behave somewhat predictably. Typically, as in the case of measles, German measles, chicken pox, the common cold and influenza-of the Hong Kong variety, or whatever-they seem to appear from nowhere, spend a few days, or at most two or three weeks, incubating in the victim's body, then cause a brief, feverish illness...
There, Dr. D. Carleton Gajdusek and his colleagues made an extract of the brain material and injected it into the brains of monkeys and a two-year-old chimpanzee named Georgette. Nothing happened to the monkeys, and for 20 months Georgette kept on growing like a normal chimp. Then, last May, Georgette became apathetic and lethargic. Her lower lip drooped, and she shivered at the slightest chill. Soon, she was staggering and stumbling as she walked; if she reached for a banana, she missed it. When she could hardly move her limbs and screamed at the gentlest touch, the researchers...
...disease in chimpanzees, Dr. Gajdusek reports in Nature, seems essentially the same as kuru in man, except that the animals could not suffer impairment of speech or bouts of maniacal laughter. This evidence, plus data from a similar disease of sheep, called scrapie, strongly suggests that the virus theory is correct. In any case, the ability to reproduce such a disease in animals should aid neurological research...