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Kuru among the Fore people

Kuru is a rare, orally transmitted, incurable neurodegenerative disorder that is caused by prions. The disease reached its peak prevalence in the 1950s and ‘60s. It is characterized by loss of coordination and control over muscle movement and it ultimately leads to death.

Kuru was first witnessed by European gold prospectors in the 1930s and '40s, and was first documented by anthropologists Berndt and Berndt in 1953.

According to D.C. Gajdusek, who also observed kuru in the 1950s, the hypothesis that the disease was spread via the endocannablistic rituals of the Fore people was extremely apparent. However, Shirley Lindenbaum and Robert Glasse were the first to formally publish the hypothesis that kuru spread through cannibalism.

Women and children would most often consume the brains of the deceased, which were the most likely body part to contain the infectious prion agent, while the men preferentially consumed muscle tissue. As a result, the vast majority of victims among the South Fore were women. In fact, eight times more women than men contracted the disease. It later affected small children and the elderly at a high rate as well.

The incidence of kuru increased in the 1940s and ‘50s and mortality rate began to approach close to 35/1000 in a population of 12000 Fore people. The mortality rate distorted the female to male ratio, which reached 1:2, or even 1:3 among South Fore. The prevalence of the kuru epidemic has been on a steady decline since the 1950s, but has linked into the 21st century due its incubation period, which can last as long as 50 years.

Though the Fore people also dispose of their dead in other ways, the most common method up to the 1960s was transumption, or consumption of their dead. Transumption not only expressed love and grief, but also recycled the deceased’s abilities within the family and quarantined the kwela, which was dangerous if not disposed of properly. It was believed that women’s wombs were best for containing the kwela.

When an individual died, after grieving for two to three days, the Fore women cut up, divided, shared, and consumed the body. The men rarely partook in the dismemberment and consumption of the corpse. They took great care to consume all parts, even drying and crushing the bones and all used cooking utensils and mixing it in with vegetables so that nothing was missed. A series of purification rituals meant to cleanse the body of kwela then took place over several weeks. Finally, there were feasts and rituals that simultaneously compensated the women for housing the kwela, acted as the final step in cleansing the body of kwela, and sent all remaining parts of the soul to the land of the dead.

This practice of transumption only amplified the spread the kuru within Fore communities. Following the outbreak, the Australian government forbade and rigorously controlled the practice, and transumption ceased almost immediately. It is now widely believed that kuru transmission through transumption had ceased by the ‘60s, though it continued longer in the south than in the north.

Fore women consumed the brain more than men and children did. Because of this and their primary role in transumption, they had a much higher mortality rate of kuru than men, which spurred a demographic emergency. Men took on the roles and duties of the mother in addition to that of the father, healers were consulted and pilgrimages organized, bride prices were withheld until the bride produced a child, and many feared extinction. The Fore people believe that ailments and misfortunes stem from sorcery, so naturally they scrambled to find the sorcerers responsible for kuru. Today, they no longer attribute kuru to sorcery. However, they have not adopted modern western medicine nor abandoned their belief in sorcery.