Director : Rob Bygott
Australia / 2010 / 52 min / Video
Official Selection FIFO 2011
It's the story of two Nobel prizes, 50 years of research and tragedy of a warning ignored that could have prevented the spread of Mad Cow Disease and its human variant CJD. It begins with the story of the Fore, where people are suffering a major epidemic that is killing over 200 people a year, which the local people call kuru, the word for shivering. They believe it's caused by sorcery. Michael Alpers and American Carleton Gadjusek discover the first new pathogen in 100 years transmitted when grieving members of the family eat the brain of their loved one.