BALTIMORE: Research involving a former brain eating tribe from Papua New Guinea is helping scientists better understand so-called prion conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and dementia.
People of the Fore tribe, studied by scientists, have developed genetic resistance to a mad cow-like disease called kuru (a prion condition), which was spread mostly by the now abandoned ritual of eating relatives’ brains at funerals.
Experts say the cannibalistic practice led to a major epidemic of kuru prion disease among the Fore people, which at its height in the late 1950s caused the death of up to 2 per cent of the population each year…