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Yes. Lindenbaum discovered the practice of endocannibalism prior to her book being published in 1974. That's over thirty years ago. No one knew what prions were yet, but Carlton Gadjusek (who got credit for just about everything related to kuru) did find out that kuru was a spongey brain disease. Once the link between infected CNS consumption and kuru was obvious, Gadjusek had a trial done on chimps. Sure enough, the chimps that ate infected tissue developed kuru. (For anyone who's not familiar, "kuru" basically means "tremble or fear." A kuru victim does resemble a PD patient who's never had meds. The Fore were convinced that kuru was caused by sorcery, like every other malady. When the Australian government cracked down on endocannibalism, kuru rates plummeted.) Scott >===== Original Message From Parkinson's Information Exchange Network <[log in to unmask]> ===== > I had FWD your message regarding the subject to my son as a point >of interest. He replied back : > >"You know, Richard Toth told me years ago (20? years ago) that >cannibals in New Guinea are dying because they'd eat the infected brains >of humans and get spongy brain disease. Interesting.... very >interesting. > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- >To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] >In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn Scott E. Antes Department of Anthropology Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, AZ 86011-5200 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn