Word: gajdusek
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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With that information, Gajdusek, who won a Nobel Prize for his efforts, uncovered a new kind of pathogen, a slow virus that may be akin to those that cause other degenerative diseases, like multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease. The solution for the Fore was a government mandate that keeps the dead out of the stew pots; by the end of the century the Laughing Death should be eradicated. Gajdusek's discovery may have brought a step closer a solution for victims of other slow viruses as well...
...fascination is in the hunt, in the search for solutions. Problem: a small tribe in New Guinea, the Fore, was threatened with extinction. For unknown reasons, most of its women were being attacked by a nerve disease that began in giggles and ended in death. Dr. D. Carleton Gajdusek, an American epidemiologist, arrived in 1957 and investigated. He gave the victims every medicine on the shelves. He checked the water in the streams, the soil, even the ashes in the cooking fires. Finally, after months of inquiry, he discovered that when someone died, the Fore buried the corpse, then...