The story of kuru, as classically told in biology textbooks, is a tragic one. The Fore population in Papua New Guinea ate the brains of their tribe members as an act of mourning, a ritual that allowed ...

Carleton Gajdusek, who has died aged 85, had the rare distinction of being a Nobel prizewinner and a convicted child molester. As a medical researcher he studied kuru, an incurable disease that ...

When members of the Fore tribe in Papua New Guinea ate the brains of their extended kin at funerals, it was their way of paying respect. Unfortunately, the ritual also helped spread kuru prion disease ...

IT WAS an exhibition at the Wellcome Medical Museum in London that drew our attention to kuru, a rare disease found only among the people of one tribe in New Guinea. “By a savage irony, one of the ...

Research on a “brain-eating tribe” may hold the key to understanding and even treating mad cow disease, according to The Daily Telegraph. A genetic study of the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea has ...