The Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen
[A] magisterial account... Anderson's compelling study captures the texture of 20th-century medical fieldwork and provides insight into the social dynamics and ethical realities of globalized science and medicine.The Collector of Lost Soulspersuades us that these things really happened and shows us why they matter.(M. Susan LindeeScience)For a lay reader it is an extraordinarily rich story about how, in the 20th century, the idea of otherness changed so profoundly. Too fast, in some instances, for researchers to catch up and understand that it was no longer acceptable to see the world—and its people—as an open adventure park for scientific exploration.(The Australian)This is not a textbook; the scientific, sociological or administrative accounts are readily available elsewhere. It is a saga of proportions seen before in tales such as Jonah and the Whale, or the magical mystery of Joseph Conrad'sHeart of Darkness.Yet the kuru story is true and this book about it demands to be read from the beginning to the end.(Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health)Distinguished by captivating storytelling and a historiographically rigorous account of the events.Lost Soulsis not only enjoyable for any interested layman, but it also provides a thoroughly researched account of a remarkable scientific adventure that spans four decades.(Nature Neuroscience)Anderson has masterfully captured the complex, exotic and often extraordinary nature of this inquiry and the idiosyncrasies of a key scientist... This is a significant book.(Annette BeasleyOceania)Warwick Anderson inThe Collectors of Lost Soulsoffers his readers a profound and historically-nuanced account of kuru as a force in shaping modernity.(Historical Records of Australian Science)This magisterial work—part history of medicine, part anthropology, and part biography of a protagonist whose scientific and personal adventures rival those of the roguish and tragic characters in Twain, Melville, and Conrad—is also a moral fable about the scientists and the New Guinea Highlanders who contributed to the research that provided a global understanding of human and animal pathology.(Shirley Lindenbaum, Graduate Center, City University of New York)This is a book of insights into individuals and research. And what individuals and research they are! The individuals are petty, noble, and brilliant; they soar and fall and secure two Nobel Prizes. The research reveals a new class of disease and illuminates questions at the very basis of biology—how things replicate. And the Fore of Papua New Guinea, who suffered first and most, remain on the margins of the world's economy—and consciousness.(Hank Nelson, Australian National University)Anderson brings historical and anthropological sensibilities to the story of kuru while teasing out the moral and market economies that figured in untangling the causes of the disease. The principal characters come to life—both the scientists, especially Carleton Gajdusek, who won a Nobel Prize, and the native Fore, who merit the standing of collaborators. A compelling and fascinating book.(Daniel J. Kevles, Yale University)This fine book collects all sorts of interlocked souls—including those of anthropologists, science and medicine studies scholars, epidemiologists, postcolonial thinkers, Pacific Island peoples and nations, mystery buffs, and just plain readers who love a beautifully written, deeply felt book. Anderson brings together a lifetime of study of the history of tropical medicine to track the story of kuru and its many actors. In a voice at once deeply personal and vulnerable as well as rich with decades of research and reflection, Anderson tells the reader about differently situated Fore people in Highland Papua New Guinea, obstreperous and heterodox foreign scientists and adventurers who fit nowhere and travel everywhere, and molecules and tissues that won't stably declare their identity and so lock down the identities of those who live and die within their fierce material grip. I read from cover to cover in one long gulp and wish the same satisfying draft on my colleagues and friends.(Donna Haraway, author ofWhen Species Meet)Anderson’s book is a valuable and sometimes provocative contribution to the study of science and medicine in colonial and post-colonial contexts. He shows how the relationships between scientific researchers and their 'tribal' research subjects have changed in the past 50 years. Modern bioethics has constructed welcome limits to research activities in this regard, but these limits are often defined purely from the perspective of the western world. Anderson gives an eloquent voice to other concepts and shows that truly global bioethics still face many challenges.(Bulletin of the World Health Organization)Especially valuable to the field for what it demonstrates about the possibility of writing a compelling narrative about postcolonial and postmodern complexity in a way that is both straightforward and engaging. It should be read as a venerable model for how to bring the insights of science studies to a broader audience.(East Asian Science, Technology and Society:An International Journal)A strikingly original and exciting work, imaginatively conceived, meticulously researched, and powerfully argued. It deserves to be widely read.(Dane KennedySocial History of Medicine)An outstanding book that is must reading for anyone interested in the history of medical science. It will help place in perspective the broad influence, the triumph, and the ultimate tragedy of the life of Nobel Laureate D. Carleton Gajdusek.(Journal of Child Neurology)This book is a fascinating read of interest to all historians and (hopefully) scientists, and draws on Anderson's wide ranging interests in the practice of medicine in a colonial context.(Jasmina BrankovichHealth and History)Very much about possession,The Collectors of Lost Soulsshould be possessed by everyone and its powers to possess let loose. This is the witchcraft of history at its best.(Roger CooterIsis)Heavily inflected by anthropological method and narrative style, Anderson’s account of Gajdusek’s career is captivating. This master historian of medicine has taken his expertise into the field with great success.(Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences)Essential reading for those concerned with science studies and biomedical ethics.(Annals of Science)Who should readCollectors? Many. Transactions and translations; issues of obligation and engagement; of power, respect and autonomy arise regularly and in many contexts, not only in development settings. Undergraduate students will be struck by the dependence of the high-tech of contemporary science on fragile personal relationships. Apprentice historians can learn much from Anderson’s narration of a story where the voices are many and the issues grave. Especially in relation to Gajdusek, I find his stance exemplary. He is chronicler, not biographer; he avoids the temptation to interpret, speak for, reduce to, explain away; he accords Gajdusek both the majesty of his achievement and the dignity of his tragedy.(British Journal for the History of Science)Anderson has created that rare thing: an academic page turner.(Alice StreetRoyal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland)Anderson has written an admirably readable book that weaves together bio-prospecting, cannibalism, colonialism, and globalization and remarkably manages to put the complexity of human relationships at the very center of the story.(Pauline KusiakEast Asian Science, Technology and Society: and International Journal)An excellent, even superb, volume, which combines great scholarly vigor with a well-told story on a fascinating and important topic. A highly 'teachable' book, it will also be of interest to anyone studying the Pacific who is interested in learning more about kuru and/or the history of medicine.(Bulletin of the Pacific Circle)Far from offering a rational, detached, absolute way of approaching the world of objects and people, in Anderson’s treatment science—and particularly scientific exchange—is as shot through with venality, avarice, outsized appetites and complicated entanglements as other human interactions. In his meticulous and multi-layered study, Anderson does an excellent job of negotiating the thin line between titillating details and scholarly analysis(IEEE Technology and Society Magazine)How kuru came to the attention of Western scientists is the story that Warwick Anderson’s stunningThe Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen.Anderson’s book, which deliberately forces readers to reimagine the meaning of scientific discovery, colonialism, and sorcery, situates its global narrative around sources found in archives in Papua New Guinea, Australia, and the United States and further develops it through oral histories delivered by scientists, anthropologists, and the Fore people.(Journal of the History of the Neurosciences)In his riveting description of the exchanges and misunderstandings that constituted the search for kuru, Anderson has created that rare thing: an academic page-turner.(Alice StreetJournal of the Royal Anthropological Inst.)An exemplary account of the discovery of the causes of a disease...a work of great theoretical insight.(Ivan CrozierJournal of the History of Medicine)This is a big story with sex, cannibalism, revolutionary scientific discoveries of unknown infectious proteins and some of the wold's most headline-catching diseases -- kuru, scrapie, CJD and BSE. The larger-than-life central character of this exotic soap opera, Nobel Prize winner Carleton Gajdusek, died in December last year [2010].(David TurnbullArena Magazine 100)This marvelous book deliberately forces us to re-imagine the meaning of sojourn, scientific discovery, colonialism, and sorcery, while at the same time providing us with an account of the discovery of Kuru, a lethal neurological disease, and the science that ultimately determined its etiology.(Stephen T. CapserThe Neuro Times)This book is great fun to read, is worth exploring for its footnotes as well, and ends with an enigmatic literary twist that is aesthetically pleasing but also worth an anthropological recontextualizing.(Michael M.J. FischerEast Asian Science, Technology, and Society: An International Journal)