Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, American Medical Researcher

Daniel Carleton Gajdusek (1923-2008) was an American physician and medical researcher who shared with with Baruch S. Blumberg the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976 for work on kuru, the first human prion disease demonstrated to be infectious. This disease was rampant among the South Fore people of New Guinea in the 1950s and 1960s. Gajdusek connected the disease to the practice of ritualistic consumption of the brains of deceased relatives. With elimination of cannibalism, kuru disappeared among the South Fore within a generation. Gajdusek transmitted the disease to primates and demonstrated its long incubation period of several years. This was the first demonstration of the infectious spread of a non-inflammatory degenerative disease in humans. Gajdusek was charged with child molestation in April 1996, based on incriminating entries in his personal diary and statements from a victim. He pleaded guilty in 1997 and was sentenced to 12 months in jail. After his release he was permitted to serve his five-year unsupervised probation in Europe. He never returned to the United States

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Biologist Biology Cannibalism Carleton Funerary Gajdusek Infectious Laureate Molester Neurological Nobelist Prion Recipient Researcher Virologist

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