The book jumps headfirst into the molecular biology ... makes sheep scrape incessantly against fence posts), mad cow disease and kuru, the illness that plagued those people in Papua New Guinea.

They called the disease kuru, which means "shivering" or "trembling." Once symptoms set in, it was a swift demise. First, they'd have trouble walking, a sign that they were about to lose control ...

In the 20th century, the Fore began suffering from kuru—a brain disease that resembles mad cow (Creutzfeldt-Jakob) disease. More than 2,500 Fore died before researchers realized that ingesting ...

Prions are especially insidious because there’s no way of stopping them, science writer D.T. Max, author of a book ... s kuru epidemic, people who they knew had been exposed to the disease ...

The practice of cannibalism in one Papua New Guinea tribe lead to the spread of a fatal brain disease called kuru that caused a devastating epidemic in the group. But now, some members of the ...

Prion diseases are fatal, transmissible neurodegenerative conditions that include Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans and bovine spongiform encephalopathy in animals. Kuru is a prion disease ...

The mutation occurs in the gene for the prion protein which is linked with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle and kuru, the brain disease that was ...