Martha Macintyre

In 1976 Carleton Gajdusek received the Nobel Prize for his scientific research into Kuru, a degenerative brain disease that afflicted a small population of Fore people in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. This book is the story of the complexities of that scientific discovery as a social process. It is also the story of Gajdusek, a medical scientist whose intellectual energy and boundless egotism ensured that the fame and glory associated with this medical advance were his, unambiguously and singularly.