Comment by awesome_dude
8 hours ago
The claim is that people in PNG are "largely immune" to these diseases, where kuru shows that they are not, and the "cure" was a stop in the practice, not some evolutionary upgrade
8 hours ago
The claim is that people in PNG are "largely immune" to these diseases, where kuru shows that they are not, and the "cure" was a stop in the practice, not some evolutionary upgrade
They are largely immune to Kuru - the number of people that could contract it (ie. the number who ate brain) was significantly larger than the number of people who actually did contract it.
The resistance came about via two separate "evolutionary upgrade"(s).
I cannot find any such claim in the literature.
It appears to me that, like BSE (aka Mad Cow disease) it really depends on exposure.
It was specifically endemic to the Fore, not so much to the Yate and Usurufa, and not particularly at all to other highland people in the general region.
There's a twofer that skittled the Fore, a ~1900 mutation that created a new form of infectious prion proteins, and a local variation that saw less uptake in the Fore of a resistant prion protein (alongside other resistant prion protein).
So, over the highlands region, there was general resistance thanks to several evolved variations, in one specific locale (the Fore) there was insufficient resistance to the mutation that hit a peak of 200 deaths / annum for about three years(?) in the late 50s.
I can't speak to "the literature", I just had a lot of conversations with the people on the ground (Mike Alpers, etc), on again / off again, since the mid 1960s.