Shirley Lindenbaum

Shirley Lindenbaum (1932–July 21, 2016) is notable for her medical anthropological work on kuru in Papua New Guinea, HIV/AIDS in the United States of America, and cholera in Bangladesh. She was a culural anthropology professor at the City University of New York.

Research on kuru

Lindenbaum began her investigative work on the cause of kuru in 1961. She and colleague Robert Glasse traveled to Papua New Guinea using a research grant from Henry Bennett of the Rockefeller Foundation. Bennett believed that kuru had a genetic origin, so he suggested that Lindenbaum and Glasse study Fore kinship. The research duo took his suggestion seriously and studied kinship in addition to oral histories, beliefs, and practices, while taking epidemiological notes on the disease itself.

Lindenbaum and Glasse discovered that Fore kinship was not based strictly on biology, but rather, it was determined by bonding with neighboring individuals. As a result, families were not described as traditional nuclear families: "Instead of depth, the Fore relied on lateral expansions of relatedness." This finding was notable because kuru was not strongly correlated with biological relationships, but rather kin in this more extended sense.

During this time, Lindenbaum and Glasse discovered that the Fore people partook in a ritual called mortuary cannibalism, where kin honored the dead by feasting on their cooked bodies. People avoided eating kin who died of dysentery and leprosy, but did not shy away from eating people who died of kuru. Through oral histories and estimation of the natural course of infection (i.e. infection to death), it was determined that this practice began in the Northern region of Fore in the 1890s or 1900s and spread throughout the region. The first case of kuru was reported to take place in 1920 from one generation of kin in the North and was not as prevalent in the next generation. Lindenbaum and Glasse noted that the transmission of this ritual closely matched the geographical spread in incidence of kuru, which provided substantial evidence that mortuary cannibalism was associated with kuru. Moreover, the research team noted that women and children were primarily impacted by kuru, which matched with the participants in this tradition. Men were less likely than women to partake in mortuary cannibalism, and when they did, they were less likely to eat women. As a result, men were less likely to get kuru compared to women and children.

This research contributed substantially to our current understanding of the transmission of Kuru. Since this research, Lindenbaum has written several reflections, articles, and books about kuru and the Fore people.

Personal life

Lindenbaum was born in 1932 and died on July 21, 2016 in New York, New York. She had a son and a daughter.