"Kuru is a fatal disease restricted to the Fore people and their immediate neighbors in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG). It was the first of the human prion diseases shown experimentally to be transmissible and it is transmitted orally, through the consumption by extended kin of infective brain and other material from dead patients at mortuary feasts"(Collinge 2008).
The Kuru disease, Otherwise known as the mad-cow disease for humans, has been abundant amongst the Fore people of Papua Guinea for decades
Here you can see the effect of how someone would look like when the Virus decides to act up:
This Disease is mainly Caused by cannibalism
but cannibalism itself is not the reason that causes the disease. To get the disease, one needs to eat something with deformed proteins called prions. Once the deformed protein is consumed, it goes straight to the brain deforming other proteins thus causing the disease (Mitchum 2009).
The image above shows a normal protein to the left and a prion to the right. We can see the difference in shape and flow of transmission.
if you want to learn more about this topic, go to
ReplyDeletehttp://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Kuru.aspx#1
There has been foundings that some of the fore people have developed genetic modification in the survivors of some of the fore people during the outbreak of the disease. Read More at:
ReplyDeletehttp://sciencelife.uchospitals.edu/2009/11/19/evolution-via-cannibalism-the-case-of-kuru/