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Article Excerpt
The Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen
By Warwick Anderson
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2008
Pp. 318
The longevity of the kuru story, and the twists and turns it has taken through epidemiology, virology, medical anthropology, colonial history and the politics and ethics of the intercultural, has been remarkable. In recognition of this Oceania asked four reviewers, who are themselves experts in the field, namely Annette Beasley, Katherine Lepani, Shirley Lindenbaum and Ceridwen Spark, to review Warwick Anderson's recently published book on the topic--The Collectors of Lost Souls. Warwick was then asked to respond. The project was made doubly timely by the news of the death late last year of Carleton Gajdusek, a major protagonist in the story of the Fore people of Papua New Guinea.
Review by Annette Beasley, Victoria University of Wellington.
As a unique episode of twentieth century medical investigation, the kuru inquiry has received little attention from medical historians and those interested in the history of science. This investigation began in the New Guinea highlands (an exotic and often bizarre setting) in the late 1950s, revolutionized our understanding of disease causation, and led to the award of a Nobel Prize to American virologist, Carleton Gajdusek. European scientists were originally attracted to the Eastern Highlands at the time of Australian pacification in response to reports from the colonial authorities of a fatal condition affecting the Fore people. In exploring this complex and prolonged investigation, Anderson weaves a 'story of how a previously isolated people made contact with the world through engaging in science, rendering the boundary between "primitive" and "modern" completely permeable' (p.4). Chronicling these relationships spans a period of fifty plus years, and leads the reader through the advance of the molecularisation of life, as kuru causation is first attributed to a slow virus and later reclassified as a prion disease.
This book draws on a wide range of literary, anthropological, historical, scientific and archival resources. The central figure of this engaging story is the 'big man' of kuru research, Carleton Gajdusek. Likened to Gogol's Chichikov in the novel Dead Souls ('who scoured the country purchasing the names of dead surfs, or dead souls' to use as collateral on loans and mortgages in the hope of becoming 'a sort of Czarist big man' p58), Gajdusek's relationships of exchange - mainly involving body parts for laboratory analysis - is the dominant theme. The forging of these relationships took place within and beyond a contact zone, drawing together the Fore and the international scientific community, and requiring the shift of Fore persons and body parts 'from one gift economy to another' (p.6). The theme of obligations of reciprocity runs through the book, highlighting the vulnerability of such transactions in a cross-cultural context where misunderstanding, confusion and suspicions are easily aroused (p. 133). This proves an effective approach from which to explore Gajdusek's quest to identify the cause of and a possible cure for kuru, and the politics of relationships and events that underpin the construction of scientific knowledge. Unfortunately, the promise of these reciprocal transactions was never fully satisfied among the Fore who expected the scientists to find a cure.
Anderson has masterfully captured the complex, exotic and often extraordinary nature of this inquiry and the idiosyncrasies of a key scientist. The book includes numerous fascinating and evocative photographs sourced from the Gajdusek Collection at the Peabody-Essex Museum. The discussion is well framed by Gajdusek's early life and burgeoning scientific career as this sets the scene for later examination of his personal and professional relationships, enchantment with the primitive, appetite for exploration, his adoption of Melanesian boys and his subsequent arrest and imprisonment on a charge of sexually molesting one of his Micronesian 'sons'. However, the risk of this framing is the promotion of Gajdusek as synonymous with kuru - a risk that Anderson to some extent mitigates by temporary shifts in focus to Gajdusek's collaborators whose assistance enabled him to carry out his work. Among other sources, Anderson draws on personal interviews to briefly explore the important contributions made by Shirley Lindenbaum and John Mathews to the identification of kuru transmission, and the unfailing support offered to Gajdusek by Michael Alpers. It is unfortunate that the description of Gajdusek's relationship with Richard Hornabrook relies on a secondary source as it conveys only the negative aspects of this relationship. In some places Anderson's discussion and analysis is disarmingly frank, particularly concerning the impact of Gajdusek's personality on others. For example, see the reference on pages 43-44 to the group of admiring younger men that Gajdusek liked to be surrounded by. Such passages alert the reader to the tensions faced by writers of 'living history' and the need to balance incisive comment against causing offence.
Putting the above issues to one side, the analytical sections are generally erudite and engaging. The Fore are portrayed as ardent and masterful participants in exchange relationships. Nevertheless, on occasions the reified nature of Anderson's analysis leaves the reader wondering about the extent to which it might resonate with the Fore and other scientists' interpretations of their experiences and/or contributions to knowledge on kuru. The difficulty of accurately, let alone adequately, interpreting the experience of 'the other' has long been the focus of anthropological debate. In this case it becomes particularly problematic given the Gajdusek-centric orientation of...
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