The Trembling Montain Account Of Kuru, Cannibals, And Mad Cow Disease: A Personal Account of Kuru, Cannibals, and Mad Cow Disease - Softcover

Klitzman, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0738206148 ISBN 13: 9780738206141

Publisher: Perseus, 2001

Synopsis

Kuru, like Mad Cow disease, is caused by a rare, infectious crystal protein that invades and colonizes human cells, destroying the nervous system of its victims. There is no known cure. It flourished in one of the remotest places on earth, Papua New Guinea, among the Fore, a people living in the Stone Age, who until recently practiced ritual cannibalism, consuming the brains of their forebears during funerary feasts. Robert Klitzman helped establish the links between these rituals and kuru. What he discovered has provided keys to understanding the mysterious Mad Cow Disease, which may become the world's next major epidemic. Robert Klitzman was 21 years old when he was invited by the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr. Carleton Gajdusek, then at the National Institutes of Health, to conduct original research on kuru. Seizing the chance to travel to the other end of the world, Klitzman embarked on an adventure that would change his life.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Reviews in Publishers Weekly, Elle
"Between his undergraduate years at Princeton and medical school at Yale, Klitzman spent a year conducting basic epidemiological research in Papua, New Guinea. Here, as in his books covering his medical internship (A Year-Long Night) and psychiatric training (In a House of Dreams and Glass), he presents an engaging autobiographical account of his experiences. Working for Nobel Prize-winner (Physiology/Medicine, 1976) Carleton Gajdusek in 1981, Klitzman lived amid the Fore, a previously cannibalistic tribe in some of the most remote parts of the country. Their community had been devastated by kuru, a deadly and heartbreaking neurological disease, spread by the ritual consumption of deceased relatives (including brain matter). Over the course of the narrative, the young Klitzman interviews stricken individuals, comes to grips with hugely divergent cultures and comes of age himself. What gives kuru additional and timely import, and makes it more than just an odd tropical malady, is that it appears to be closely related to Mad Cow disease. Despite the subtitle, however, the link between the two diseases, while very real, is not lingered over by Klitzman. But even stripped of the headlines, his scientific adventure story, although occasionally reflecting a naive and self-centered young man, is a briskly engaging and informative work. 75 photos."--Publishers Weekly

"Filled with touching descriptions of Klitzman's unfortunate patients and dire warnings about the possibilities of a worldwide epidemic of Mad Cow disease. The Trembling Mountain reminds us of the perils that lurk beneath the gorgeous surface of a lush and exotic island." --Francine Prose, Elle

About the Author:

Dr. Robert Klitzman, currently an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, is the author of Being Positive: The Lives of Men and Women with HIV, A Year-Long Night: Tales of A Medical Internship and In a House of Dreams and Glass: Becoming a Psychiatrist. He graduated from Princeton University and Yale Medical School, and has been a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in scientific journals and textbooks, as well as the New York Times and other publications. He has recieved numerous honours and awards, including a Burroughs Wellcome Fellowship (for Future Leaders in Psychiatry) from the American Psychiatric Association, an Aaron Diamond Foundation Fellowship, and a Picker/Commonwealth Scholar Award. He has also been a Fellow at Yaddo and MacDowell.

About this edition

• Publisher: Perseus
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0738206148
• ISBN 13: 9780738206141
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 348