OBITUARY OF CARLETON GAJDUSEK
BY MICHAEL ALPERS

Dr. Daniel Carleton Gajdusek (1923-2008) was an American physician, medical researcher, Nobel laureate and boysexual. The following obituary of him, published in the Papua New Guinea Medical Journal, volume 53, no. 1-2, March-June 2010, pp. 54-64, is by his colleague, the distinguished Australian medical researcher Michael Philip Alpers (1934-2024), who had known him well for forty-six years.

Only about a quarter of the obituary is of Greek love interest, but those bits are hard to separate from the rest without losing their context, so it is reproduced in its entirety.

The footnotes, all part of the original article, have had to be renumbered for technical reasons.

Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, 1923-2008: an appreciation of his life and his love for Papua New Guinea

Daniel Carleton Gajdusek was born in Yonkers. New York, USA on 9 September 1923 and died in Tromso, Norway on 11 December 2008. His American parents were of Central European origin, his father Slovak and his mother Hungarian. His father was a butcher and businessman who had a generous capacity for enjoying life. His mother’s enthusiasms were quieter and had a more enduring influence; before he could read Carleton was nurtured on the classics of ancient literature and mythology. He was very close to his younger brother, Robert, usually called Robin or Bobby, a poet and a distinguished scholar and teacher of English literature, known for his work on Ernest Hemingway and D.H. Lawrence; Carleton was devastated when Bobby died in 2003. His maternal aunt, lrene Dobroscky, was a scientist and an important influence while he was growing up^[1]. When he was a schoolboy his aunt arranged summer employment for him at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, where she worked; there he synthesized one of the first herbicides, the importance of which he was made aware of only many years later. He was a precocious child and an avid reader in science and literature from an early age. In the family house in Yonkers Carleton had written the names of famous microbiologists from Paul de Kruif’s ‘Microbe Hunters’ on the steps leading to the attic. Carleton remained proud of his youthful ambitions to emulate these scientists and, whenever I stayed with him in Yonkers, he would enjoin me to climb the stairs to stardom; since they led to a book-lined attic I was more than happy to do so. Carleton from the age of 10 years was determined on a career in medical research, the best preparation for which he believed was the study of mathematics, physics and chemistry.

Carleton’s first degree was from the University of Rochester in New York State, where from 1940 to 1943 he studied physics, biology, mathematics and chemistry. During these years he also learned the delights of hiking and camping in the woods and mountains. He then went to Harvard Medical School. As a medical student he was captivated by children and clinical paediatrics, and spent much of his time at the Boston Children’s Hospital. After graduation in 1945 he did his internship and residency at the Babies Hospital, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and obtained his Specialty Board certification in paediatrics. In 1948-1949 he had an intensely rewarding and creative period at the California instate of Technology (Caltech) with Linus Pauling, John Kirkwood and Max Delbrück and made many lifelong friends among his teachers and fellow-students. He moved back to Harvard to work in virology with John Enders. From there he was drafted into military service during the Korean War to work under Joseph Smadel at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center studying Korean haemorrhagic fever. Though they did not find the causative agent (now known to be a hantavirus) they determined that it was spread thought rodent urine (which made the army cooks particularly susceptible). There was a considerable body of literature in many languages describing haemorrhagic fevers right across Eurasia and Carleton used his scientific and linguistic skills to produce a definitive monograph on the subject ^[2].

Carleton loved working among children, was a highly respected paediatrician and never lost his interest in clinical paediatrics, but his professional life could never have been restricted to conventional paediatric practice. His particular passion was for viral, rickettsial and other infections and, his military service over, he joined Ted Woodward at the University of Maryland and went off, in 1954, to study rabies, haemorrhagic fevers, arbovirus infections and plague in Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey with Marcel Baltazard. The excitement and challenge of these studies led to his realization that there was an urgent need to investigate epidemiological problems in remote and isolated populations while there was still an opportunity to do so. The quest for these problems was to occupy and fulfil much of his subsequent life.

As a young man Carleton befriended younger men and adolescent boys who were from disadvantaged backgrounds or in personal trouble. He nurtured them over many years in their psychological and professional development. He was very proud of their subsequent achievements and maintained close contact with them and their families throughout his life. It is significant that Carleton began to create his own extended family even as he was reaching his own manhood. The family of adopted Melanesian and Micronesian sons and daughters that came later can be seen as a direct extension of Carleton’s urge to strengthen the bonds of friendship until they were family ties. In a wider context, for as long as I knew him, Carleton always blurred the distinctions between colleagues, friends and family, which was exemplified by his famous Family and Friends List of addresses and contact information. Judith Farquhar describes how the list was maintained in the early days of Carleton’s laboratory at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)^[3]; and right to the end of his life Carleton was pleased to be able to turn to his friend and extended family member Dorrie Runman to bring the List up to date. The List, moreover, was in constant use since, wherever he was in the world, Carleton lost no opportunity to   see his friends and their families. When he could not see them he wrote to them – he had an amazing energy for correspondence. Carleton also kept in touch through sharing his publications, sent out from the lab in ‘frequent marathon mailings of reprints’^[4]. Again, distinctions were blurred: people from all walks of life whom Carleton had befriended were suddenly subjected to a flow of abstruse scientific papers arriving in their mailbox; and colleagues who had recently made Carleton’s acquaintance were surprised to receive his friendly postcards, with comments about science and art intermingled, sent from obscure corners of the world.

Carleton’s love of travel was particularly directed to places challenging to reach. Though he found the natural environment interesting, and indeed inspiring if it was wild and rugged, the people living in these remote places and what they had created there provided the principal attractions for him. He had an uncanny facility for making contact with people through non-verbal communication and by picking up words in their language. Characteristically he would make his entrance into the community through the children, with whom he seemed to have a universal rapport. He was never a tourist. Wherever he went he showed an interest in every aspect of life in that locality and studied as many of them as he could, in his inimitable way. In 1950 and 1951 he visited the Sierra Tarahumara of Mexico and studied the people and the environment, which he described in a paper in a geographical journal^[5]; this was Carleton’s sixth publication. He also reported the local people’s way of catching fish^[6]. After that time, in all his travels he was too busy discovering diseases or undertaking biomedical studies to make separate papers of his geographical or cultural findings; these date were confided to his journals or, occasionally, published in papers related to disease studies^[7], nutrition^[8] or genetics^[9] or, if there was a paediatric slant to them, presented at meetings of the American Pediatric Society or the Society for Pediatric Research.

In 1955 Carleton made the first of several trips to South America. Among groups of indigenous people he began his studies of child growth and development that he added to for the rest of his working life: observing, talking, examining, collecting samples for medical and genetic studies, filming, photographing and recording it all in his journal. He would spend the night writing his journal, into which he poured not only the information collected during the day but his whole personality. He believed that his journals were his greatest achievement and made every effort, particularly in his later years, to have them all transcribed and collated; as each was finished he indulged in the pleasure of having copies bound. The number of bound copies and their distribution depended on their ‘sensitivity’ but, as far as Carleton was concerned, even his most confidential journals with the most restricted circulation were still in the public domain. In practice this was true since any legal restriction placed on their use did not prevent them being misused against him during his time of trouble in the 1990s. Carleton did not have much respect for bureaucrats or functionaries but he somehow always managed to enlist their aid in getting his samples out from the wildest places and sent to laboratories in the USA and elsewhere for testing. The films that he took were designed to become part of a comprehensive global record, for which an innovative scientific methodology was created^[10].

It was inevitable that Carleton, with his passion and purpose to encompass the world, would visit Melanesia. His opportunity came when he received a National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis Visiting Investigator award in virus genetics and immunology that enabled him to work with Frank Macfarlane Burnet at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) in Melbourne. He describes his journal of the time (August to October 1955) as a period spent meandering toward Australia with travels in France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaya and Singapore. He reached Western Australia by boat and crossed to Melbourne by train. While in Australia he visited Aboriginal Australian communities in north Queensland and went to the Australian Territory of Papua and New Guinea, arriving in Port Moresby for the first time on 29 June 1956. He stayed until mid-August; after a few days in the Popondetta area he flew to Rabaul and spent the rest of his time with the West Nakanai and Mamusi people of central New Britain. In Melbourne he worked initially on the genetics of influenza virus. Macfarlane Burnet and the Institute of which he was Director were renowned for virological research. However, Carleton, in studying hepatitis, included a chronic form of hepatitis that was under investigation by Ian Mackay at the Institute and veered in a new direction; by the end of his time at WEHI he had described a test for autoimmune disease that was positive in several chronic diseases^[11], a significant and novel finding with wide implications. One of the consequences of this was that Burnet decided to switch the emphasis of WEHI from virology to immunology. This led to a surge in creative scientific work and the subsequent award of a Nobel Prize to Burnet for his work in immunology.

After his time at WEHI was over Carleton set off back to the USA, where he had been offered a position as a visiting scientist at the NIH by Joe Smadel, with whom he had worked during the Korean War and who was now Associate Director of the NIH. On his way home Carleton took the opportunity of paying another visit to the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. He planned to see the people he had previously got on so well with and also visit Ian Burnet, Macfarlane Burnet’s son, who was an agricultural officer at Lots, a remote post in the Eastern Highlands. On Thursday 7 March 1957 in Port Moresby he met Dr Roy Scragg, who told him about a new disease called kuru that had been found in the Okapa area of the Eastern Highlands.^[12] On the following Monday he flew to Goroka. He was fascinated by Kuru but concerned that Burnet had already been asked to investigate the disease. He made plans to fly to Lae and then on to New Britain, but he also arranged that the doctor in Kainantu, Vincent Zigas, would meet him at the airport with some kuru patients for him to see. Zigas had examined cases of kuru in Okapa and had brought several patients to Kainantu Hospital. Previously he had sent tissue samples to Burnet for investigation in Melbourne. Carleton got off the plane in Kainantu, and on examining the two patients brought to the airport by Dr Zigas recognized immediately that kuru was a significant neurological disease. He abandoned his plans, had his bag taken off the plane and stayed in Kainantu (as described by Gloria Chalmers, Vin Zigas’s former wife, at a meeting held in Melbourne in 2009 to celebrate Carleton’s life and legacy). Vin and Carleton than set off to Okapa to investigate kuru; they were welcomed and assisted by Jack Baker, who was the patrol officer in charge of the subdistrict. They worked frantically on their investigations and it was not until the following January that Carleton completed the first phase of his research studies on kuru and left Okapa ^[13]. His decision to stay and investigate kuru was endorsed by Joe Smadel, who allowed him to take up his new ‘visiting’ position at the NIH from the highlands of what is now the independent State of Papua New Guinea (PNG)—but was then an Australian Trust Territory— and provided logistic support to enable his research work in the field to go ahead. He also arranged for the receipt of Carleton’s field samples and their analysis at the NIH. Burnet and the Australian authorities were very put out by Carleton’s passionate pursuit of kuru and his continuing research presence but, despite many attempts, they could not get rid of him, nor, in fact, did they have anyone willing to go to the field and work in his place. Meanwhile Carleton was pouring forth information and ideas about kuru in long letters to Burnet and other colleagues. This saga is part of history^[14]. Carleton and Vin published their first papers on Kuru in the United States and Australia almost simultaneously in November 1957 (but with the shorter US paper having slight priority – which, revealingly, was important to Carleton)^{[15] [16]} Later, they published in German^[17] and in the Papua New Guinea Medical Journal^[18].

Carleton made several epic walks in Papua New Guinea. Though they mostly arose out of his kuru work they quickly assumed a life and purpose of their own. In 1957 he and Jack Baker defined the geographical limits of the kuru region, the area that enclosed all village communities with a history of kuru^[19]. There were 172 of them, of which 155 have had cases of kuru reported since the beginning of 1957 – the latest version of the village map may be found in Collinge et al.^[20]. This mapping exercise was a significant achievement and was, moreover, completed remarkably quickly. The disease incidence faded out in the north and west but in the south-east the boundary was sharp: on the fore side of the Lamari River the incidence was at its highest and on the Anga side it was zero. Establishing this important fact required long walks among the Anga. Carleton also walked south and west on a major expedition through the remote lands of the Yar Pawaian and Gimi peoples to Lufa. Then Carleton and Jack struck south and walked to the Gulf of Papua. Carleton’s arrival in Port Moresby after this expedition is described vividly by Roy Scragg^[21]. In 1962 I joined him in a walk from Okapa to Menyamya. We crossed known and then unknown Anga territory and met the patrol officer from Wonenara making his initial patrol south. We walked over the top of Mt Yelia and found that it was a volcano, a fact not then known by the government volcanologist. Taka Gomea also remembers this walk and its sequel^[22]. Carleton was proud of this speed and stamina on patrol, but he also took care of his support staff and carrier line. Of course, one had to do so in order to get through, but Carleton’s care was abundant and personal – and this meant caring for a large number of people since carriers were afraid to go far from their home territory and had to be replaced at every new stage of the journey. Carleton also studied diseases and walked extensively in West New Guinea (then Netherlands New Guinea, now Indonesian Papua). Once, at the time the authorities were doing their utmost to stop him working in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, he turned up in Okapa not by the usual route but by walking across the border from West New Guinea.

In Okapa Carleton acquired assistants from among the local people, mostly young men and boys, to help him with fieldwork, and he made many local friends of all ages, from the Fore and Anga groups in particular. These friendships endured and were renewed each time Carleton returned to work in the field. In 1957 the early team of investigators was augmented by the arrival of two women. Lucy Hamilton (later Reid) and Lois Larkin. Lucy was a nutritionist and undertook important studies on Fore nutrition especially in Moke, the home village of the Okapa patrol post^[23]. Lois had assisted Carleton in the laboratory work carried out at WEHI on the autoimmune complement fixation test^[24] and came to Okapa to enhance the laboratory aspects of their investigations. Lois was a close personal friend, in fact. Carleton always maintained that, if he had been of the marrying kind, Lois would have been his choice. Of course, despite this reservation, marriage might still have happened: but it didn’t – and Lois married Jack Baker.

Carleton’s work on kuru brought him back to Papua New Guinea many times in the next 30 years. It was by no means his only research interest or achievement but it was the one that made him famous and led to his Nobel Prize in 1976^[25]. The principal significant outcomes of this work, after the initial description of the disease with Vin Zigas, were the experimental transmission of kuru to chimpanzees, with an incubation period of about 2 years, carried out in collaboration with Clarence J. (Joe) Gibbs and myself^[26], and the subsequent transmission of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease^[27]. This showed that kuru, though geographically restricted to a remote part of the Eastern Highlands of PNG, was a disease of unquestioned global significance.

Of course Carleton did not do all the work on kuru on his own, even though, particularly after he had won the Nobel Prize, the media – universally – and the scientific community – for the most part - believed that he did. This is a consequence of the enduring myth of the lone scientific genius succeeding against all odds, and is part of the media’s fixation with stardom, which in science is exacerbated by the hype surrounding the Nobel Prizes. However, Carleton relished the stardom that had been thrust upon him and made little effort to deny it or share it. Therefore, apart from his colleagues already mentioned, we should acknowledge here the work on kuru carried out by others. This may be done most conveniently by reference to papers in the proceedings of the End of Kuru conference held in 2007, in particular to the early work of Bob Glasse and Shirley Lindenbaum^[28],^[29], Richard Hornabrook^[30]. John Mathews^[31] and others^[32] and to the recent studies – for research on kuru still continues – by myself^[33] and by John Collinge and Jerome Whitefield and their colleagues^[34].

Carleton became interested in other neurological diseases found in remote and isolated populations. He studied the complex of motor neurone disease, parkinsonism and dementia in the Chamorro people of Guam and in isolated populations in the swamps of the south-east of West New Guinea. He visited many other places in West New Guinea and in particular investigated hyper endemic goitre in the highland populations and the spread of cysticercosis after its introduction through pigs brought in from Java^[35]. From Guam he travelled widely throughout the islands and atolls of Micronesia and expanded his paediatric and genetic studies into the many small island populations of Micronesia. In the course of doing so he entered into the life of Micronesian communities and made many new friends.

After the success of the work in kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease Carleton’s laboratory at the NIH expanded considerably. His team studied the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), as they now called this group of diseases. How the laboratory functioned and its achievements during these years have been described by David Asher^[36], Judith Farquhar^[37] and Richard Benfante^[38]. The nature of the unconventional infectious agent that caused kuru and other TSEs was finally shown to be a pure protein, called a prion by Stanley Prusiner^[39]. Even after he had left his laboratory Carleton was engaged in the expansion of these new ideas in biology, and in seeking an explanation as to how these proteins might self-propagate to cause disease, finding speculative parallels from the atomic level to outer space^[40]. Prusiner’s contribution to this revolutionary discovery led to his own Nobel Prize on 1997. However, Carleton adamantly refused to use the term ‘prion’^[41] and always called these agents unconventional viruses or ‘infectious amyloids’.

Carleton never married, though he took a delighted interest in his brother’s various marriages and relationships and in his two nephews, Mark Terry and Karl Lawrence Gajdusek. As a young man in Boston Carleton had a relationship with a Chinese paediatrician, Chen-Ting Chin. When she returned to China she gave birth to their son. China then became closed to US citizens. As the son grew up he developed a chronic respiratory disease. Carleton was very worried about him and was determined to be the first US citizen into China when entry finally became possible in the Nixon era. However, sadly, he was too late. His son died aged in his mid-20s before Carleton even had the chance of seeing him. Nevertheless, it was not long before Chen-Ting, by then a nationally renowned paediatrician in Beijing, was able to come out. She worked at the NIH as a visiting scientist – though her main aim, it seemed, was to take care of Carleton and mother his adopted children. She eventually returned again to China, where she died aged in her 90s.

In 1963 Carleton brought Josede Figirliyong from Micronesia and lvan Mbaginta’o from PNG to live with him in Maryland in the United States. Ivan was originally from Dunkwi village of the Anga people but had been brought up in the South Fore village of Agakamatasa, where Carleton for a long time had a home. Over the next 30 years Carleton brought another 21 young Micronesians and another 15 years young Papua New Guineans to live with him as part of his family in the US and be educated there. They came in small groups and stayed for a variable length of time, so they were not all there at the same time. Of these 38 children 5 were girls. Several of the Micronesians stayed in the US after they had finished their education in high school or college, but all the Papua New Guineans, except for one, went back home. However, irrespective of where they lived and their relationship with their extended families at home, they regarded themselves, and continued to be regarded by Carleton, as members of his family. The family bond was a strong and permanent one and continues after Carleton’s death to bind the siblings together. In the Melanesian concept of family Carleton was unequivocally the father and his children brothers and sisters, no matter how many other fathers the children may have had in their home communities. This concept is hard to explain to outsiders, including those working in PNG, who will usually be completely bewildered when they learn that a colleague has taken leave for the third time to attend the funeral of their father.

When they formed part of the same household the Micronesians and Melanesians interacted very closely. They chose informal names for their groups of origin, the  Mikes and the Moros, and the names stuck. Carleton was proud of his Mikes and Moros and they too were proud to be part of Carleton’s large family. Since Carleton was away a lot it would not have been a viable family if there had been no-one to take care of them. The mothering was done by Joe Wegstein, a mathematician who worked for the National Bureau of Standards and never left home – except when he took some of the kids fishing. It was a perfect arrangement. Joe, with his regular habits and help with homework when it was needed, was a stabilizing influence on the family and the household. Joe and his helpers rostered for the day prepared the evening meal, for the family alone or, as was more common, for the family and a large number of guests – even when Carleton was away there were often guests for dinner. It did not matter to Joe how many there were for dinner just so long as he knew the exact umber before he left his office to do the shopping on his way home. It was a lovely household to be part of, as I was on many occasions during my working visits to the NIH. Many colleagues from around the world will testify to the pleasures of dining at Carleton’s table with all the kids there and a cosmopolitan gathering of colleagues and friends. On weekends we would go to one or two of the many museums in downtown Washington and wander around the city from Capitol Hill to Georgetown. Occasionally we would drive to Yonkers and spend a long weekend in New York, exploring the city, its parks and museums. Carleton loved to visit museums and share his delight in art or natural history or American Indian culture with his family and friends.

There are several misunderstandings about the purpose of Carleton’s family. In principle it had the same purpose as any functional family: to nurture and educate children and to engage them all in family activities in a loving and caring home environment. It was not an experiment in child development or personal ‘civilizing’ processes. It was not an experiment in social development or creating leaders who would bring their ‘primitive societies’ into the modern world. Nor was it a form of payment for services rendered to him in the fold. It was his indulgence, his unique way of creating his own family. Carleton knew that children in Papua New Guinea had his same range of potential abilities as children everywhere but he had no preconceived expectation about the potential or achieved capabilities of his individual children. They developed their own potential and Carleton, like any good father, was pleased when that happened. They competed their high school education, and two went back to Papua New Guinea with a university degree. Yavine Borima the only Papua New Guinean who stayed in the US, was an artist and completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Corcoran School of Art (now the Corcoran College of Art and Design) in Washington, DC, Ivan Mbaginta’o became Curator of the J.K. McCarthy Museum in Goroka and later returned to the US on a Wenner-Gren scholarship to study at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Sadly, Ivan died of asthma in Goroka Hospital in 2005. Okovi Yarao, the youngest of Carleton’s sons, has also died more recently. The others are now scattered in PNG, some in their home village, some in Goroka, some in Lae, some in Port Moresby. Ceridwen Spark, an anthropologist with a special interest in adoption, has written a sympathetic account of Carleton’s kids’^[42]. Carleton’s 80^th birthday was celebrated in Bologna in 2003 and the party was attended by friends and family, including Yavine and Ivan (Figure 1).

Writing the obituary – or even an appreciation – of a person does not normally requite an examination of their sexuality. However, almost every obituary of Carleton that has been published has addressed this issue, and in most cases the implications have been derogatory and egregiously wrong, especially those in the major newspapers. Though not all the accusations have been explicit the implications have always been that Carleton as a practising ‘paedophile’ brought children (or simply ‘boys’) from Melanesia and Micronesia to be educated in the United States so that he could abuse them. This statement is so far from the truth and so painful to members of his family that it is hard to record, but it has been implied so often that, in deference to Carlton’s memory, it must be confronted, and denied. We need to look calmly at the facts, firstly about Carleton and secondly about his conviction for sexual molestation.

Carleton’s sexual orientation was undoubtedly towards males and in particular young men and boys. He declared this explicitly in the privacy of his diaries, but for most of his adult life his sexual orientation was strictly a private matter, as it is with most people. However, it was not fixed or confined and Carleton was able to build good relationships with people of both sexes and all ages, and of widely differing sexual orientations. He lived with men. He lived with women, by one of whom he had a son. He was most happy with children and had a remarkable rapport with them. When he entered a household the adults were overwhelmed by his conversation and the children were charmed by his personality. Those who met Carleton when they were children have never forgotten him and, if he came back to their home, the rapport was instantly renewed. Carleton always defined ‘paedophile’ as ‘a lover of children’, and that is exactly what he was: and children loved him in return. The connotation of ‘paedophile’ today is inextricably linked to sexual abuse, so we cannot apply it to Carleton. However, we must acknowledge that there was a sexual component to Carleton’s love of male children. His principal same-sex orientation was not hidden or denied, and those able to pick up clues to his sexuality could and would do so, but it was not publicly discussed. However, after his arrest and year in gaol he became obsessed with his sexuality and for a time could talk or write of nothing else. This was not his normal behaviour but was a reaction to the deep traumas and torment he had suffered. Nevertheless, what he thought and talked and wrote about was true and important and raises conflicting moral issues. Everyone has difficulty adjusting their sexual behaviour to their moral values. This is no place for a discourse on psychosexuality or sexual morality, but the dilemmas are clearly more complex for those who are sexually attracted to children – and there is no point in pretending that such people do not exist or that it is all in their imagination. The critical thing is whether the sexuality that one has been given is deployed in an abusive way or not. Love and desire between a man and a woman is a beautiful thing, but raping a woman is universally regarded as criminal abuse. All forms of sexuality can be abused. The important question at issue – at least in most parts of the contemporary world – is whether there has been abuse or not. In Carleton’s case the charge is abuse of his children. It is only they who can answer that. From the accounts here by three of his living Melanesian children^[43] one can make one’s own assessment of the truth of this charge.

The other lie that is widely promulgated is that one of Carleton’s Micronesian children made a formal complaint that he had been abused by Carleton. There was no formal complaint. The true story goes like this. One of the junior members of Carleton’s staff at the National Institutes of Health had felt offended by some action or remark of Carleton’s and became embittered and angry. He was determined to get back at Carleton and conducted a sustained and impassioned campaign to discredit him. Eventually he succeeded. It is a sad fact to reflect upon that without the persistence of his nemesis Carleton would be revered today for his love, not denounced for his sexuality. In this story the young man is the elephant in the room that no-one ever mentions in the accounts of Carleton’s arrest, charges of sexual abuse, trial and imprisonment. Without his agency nothing of this kind would have happened. He went through Carleton’s published journals and private diaries and papers and pulled out what he considered to be incriminating material, which he sent to senior members of the United States Congress. Computer files had to be secured to prevent him gaining access to private and confidential records at night. Carleton was aware of his activities; he was not sacked but allowed to continue since Carleton preferred to consider him harmless. Thus Carleton’s combined generosity and hubris contributed to the disastrous outcome. The young man’s first campaign with Congress failed. Then he had a win with the claim that Carleton’s laboratory held illegal stocks of smallpox virus. A multimillion-dollar investigation closed the lab for months but failed to find smallpox. Then the composition of Congress changed, with greater representation of the fundamentalist right wing of the political spectrum. The young man’s persistence paid off and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was called in to take action. They found one of Carleton’s Micronesian sons who was failing in college, despite all the help Carleton was giving him, and persuaded him, through monetary and other inducements, to take part in an entrapment: he would call his father and ask him certain questions according to a script prepared by the FBI, and the phone call would be recorded. On the basis of the entrapment transcript the FBI decided to go ahead and press charges. Carleton was arrested outside his home in Frederick County, Maryland after he had returned from a visit to Slovakia. As he was being arrested and roughly taken away, and before charges had been formally laid, television cameras, strategically placed in advance of his arrest, recorded the whole proceedings, which were soon flashed across the nation. In that moment Carleton’s reputation was shattered: from honoured Nobel laureate to paedophile laureate, whatever the outcome of any subsequent court proceedings might have been. Carleton’s other children and nearly all his friends, some most bravely, supported him vigorously and without question, when he was in turmoil and torment. While he was on bail and awaiting trial, Carleton’s children and friends wrote letters of support to the judge presiding over his case. In the meantime the FBI added more charges, of varying degrees of seriousness, to his charge sheet. Finally his lawyer gave Carleton a choice: “Fight every charge, one by one, with an excellent chance of winning them all, and go free, after a cost of many millions of dollars and ten years of your life; or plea bargain, and have all charges dropped forever except for one to which you will plead guilty and for which you will be given a commuted sentence of one year in gaol.” For several reasons, not the least of which was the fact that his reputation was already totally destroyed, Carleton chose the latter option. After spending exactly a year in gaol, he came out, got his passport from his lawyer, had a small celebration at Dulles International Airport with close colleagues and his children who lived in the Washington area, and flew off to Paris, never to return. He lived for another 10 years in Europe, mainly in Amsterdam but also in Paris and Tromsø, travelled to Japan and Singapore and was several times a visiting professor in China, where he was revered like a god, before his heart finally gave out in Tromsø on 11 December 2008.

The eulogy and farewell to Carleton delivered at his funeral in Tromsø by Yavine Borima is reproduced here with Yavine’s permission.

We, his friends and family, honour Carleton and express our love and respect for him as we sadly say farewell. Carleton hated long and emotional funeral ceremonies, even for those closest to him, so we should respect his wishes on this occasion, and be brief and calm, despite the sorrow we are feeling.

Carleton was a scientist, a doctor, a thinker, a humanist, an explorer, a warm friend and a loving father. Because of the way he had been persecuted and tormented he became in recent years obsessed with his sexuality. However, that aspect of his life and personally no more represents the man than does the scientific achievement for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. He was too rich and complex to be confined into any one category. Nor was he a split personality: his different facets shone as parts of one integrated whole.

To know Carleton was to share his wealth. He was very generous to those he loved. We enjoyed science, literature, food, wine, art, music, travel together - combined in complex and sophisticated ways but never without some moments of simple wonder and delight.

Carleton had so much energy, intellectual and physical. He never stopped – even in sleep he seemed poised for action from the moment would stir again into waking life.

Carleton was fired by his own enthusiasm, like a Greek god, and with it he captivated others. He enjoyed being alone, addressing his own thoughts in his journal, or reading, but more than anything he loved company, which gave him an audience to enthral.

Carleton was never overawed by important people and treated everyone equally. In a household he would keep the adults silent with his flow of speech and ideas but he took special care to pay attention and listen to the children. He loved children, and showed it in many touching and subtle ways.

When he was a young man Carleton was physically fit, a strong walker and an adventurous explorer. He had an extraordinary ability to make friends with wary and apprehensive people of an unknown culture living in wildly remote communities. Within minutes of his arrival in the community he would have the children romping all over him; some mysterious rapport instantly connected him to children, wherever he was, and this transcended all cultural differences. When the adults came to see what was going on Carleton gradually gathered them too under his spell. It was a rare privilege to share such experiences with him.

Despite the power of his intellect, what was most impotent to Carleton was love, and he was never afraid to acknowledge it and share it. He loved his family – his mother, his aunt, his brother and everyone in the family of Mikes and Moros that he had created to be his own. He loved his friends and his colleagues and regularly kept in touch with a large number of them. Once, in the early days of the lab at the NIH, he was asked what held his unusual crew of scientists and supporting staff together. His reply was one word: love.

We love you, Carleton. That is uppermost in our thoughts as we say farewell to you. All your family and friends love you and we thank you for enriching our lives.

Goodbye, Carleton. From your heartland of Papua New Guinea we all say goodbye. Yu yet go pinis nau, yu lusim mipela, na mipela no ken lukim yu gen. Tasol mipela olgeta no ken lusim tingting long yu. Nogat tru. Mipela bai tingting long yu moa moa yet, long oltaim.

Stap isi, Kaoten. Rest quietly now. Farewell.

The last great event in Carleton’s life was the End of Kuru Conference held at the Royal Society in London in October 2007. He was quite infirm by then but with the assistance of a friend he managed the flight from Amsterdam, where he was living, to London. There were 15 Papua New Guineans at the conference, including some of his early assistants whom he had not seen for many years. Their reunion was an emotional and physical intermingling that generated a buzz of excitement felt by all of us who were present. Carleton presented a paper at the conference, which came out in the proceedings published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society^[44]. Carleton enjoyed himself hugely at the meeting and had fun putting together his paper, which connected kuru and the concepts learned from it to a truly fantastic range of contexts. He also praised the cultural achievements of the Palaeo-Melanesians, the early inhabitants of Papua New Guinea, for providing us with an ancient model of a civilized society. It was particularly gratifying to John Collinge and me, as the organizers of the conference, that Carleton received his copy of the Transactions about a month before he died. The reminiscences and reflections of the Papua New Guinean participants were also published in the proceedings and most of them mentioned their early memories of working with Carleton^[45]. He was indeed a remarkable and unforgettable person. His roving spirit was always firmly linked to Papua New Guinea and has now surely settled in its ground, so much of which he had walked over, and in the hearts of his many Papua New Guinean friends, especially his beloved Moros, his sons and daughters, who were so vital a part of his adopted family and his life.

Michael P. Alpers
Centre for International Health
Curtin University
Health Research Campus
Shenton Park
GPO Box U 1987
Perth
Western Australia 6845
Australia   
         

This obituary was followed by three much shorter ones written by three Papua New Guineans, two boys and a girl, who had been raised at least partly by Gajdusek in his home in the USA. As Alpers says above, from them “one can make one’s own assessment of the truth of this charge [that he abused his children].”  They are not reproduced here because they did not mention Greek love, so it had better be added that they are powerful testimony to Gajdusek having been a superb foster-father (a term they all reject in favour of real father) and to the deep love, admiration and gratitude they all felt for him.                                  

^[1] Gajdusek DC. Autobiographical sketch. In: Les Prix Nobel en 1976. The Nobel Foundation. Stockholm. PA Norstedt and Soner. 1977: 161-166.  

^[2] Gajdusek DC. Acute Infectious Hemorrhagic Fevers and Mycotoxicoses in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Medical Science Publication No 2 of the Army Medical Service Graduate School. Walther Reed Army Medical Center. Washington DC. Walter Reed Army Medical Center, May 1953 140p.   

^[3] Farquhar J. The expanded Laboratory of Collaborative and Field Research, Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2003-363-3634-3635. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2008.4010        

^[4] Farquhar J. The expanded Laboratory of Collaborative and Field Research, Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2003-363-3634-3635. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2008.4010

^[5] Gajdusek DC. The Sierra Tarahumara. Geogr Rev 1953. 43.15-38.

^[6] Gajdusek DC. Tarhumara Indian piscicide Gilia macombi Torrey. Science 1954, 120 438. 

^[7] Gajdusek DC, Zigas V. Studies on kuru, I. The ethnologic setting of kuru. Am J Trop Med Hyg 1961: 10:80-91.

^[8] Sorenson ER, Gajdusek DC. Nutrition in the kuru region. 1. Gardening food handling and diet of the Fore people. Acta Trop 1969 26 281-330.   

^[9] Gajdusek DC, Alpers MP. Genetic studies in relation to kuru. I. Cultural, historical and demographic background. Am J Hum Genet 1972 24 (6 Suppl) S1-S38.

^[10] Sorenson ER, Gajdusek DC. The study of child behavior and development in primitive cultures. A research archive for ethnopediatric  film investigations of styles in the patterning of the nervous system Pediareics 1966: 37(1 Pt 2) i-iv. 149-243.

^[11] Gajdusek DC. An ‘auto-immune’ reaction against human tissue antigens in certain chronic diseases. Nature 1957: 179:666-668.    

^[12] Scragg RER. Kuru memories from 1957. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008: 363.3661-3663. (doi: 10.1098/rstb.2008.4028)

^[13] Farquhar J, Gajdusek DC, eds. Kuru Early Letters and Field Notes from the Collection of D. Carleton Gajdusek. New York: Raven Press, 180, 338 p.

^[14] Farquhar J, Gajdusek DC, eds. Kuru Early Letters and Field Notes from the Collection of D. Carleton Gajdusek. New York: Raven Press, 180, 338 p.; Anderson WH. Early perceptions of an epidemic Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008: 363.3675-3678. (doi: 10.1098/rstb 2008.0082) 

^[15] Gajdusek DC, Zigas V. Degenerative disease of the central nervous system in New Guinea. The endemic occurrence of ‘kuru’ in the native population. N Engl J Med 1957 Nov 14: 257: 974-978.

^[16] Zigas V, Gajdusek DC. Kuru: clinical study of a new syndrome resembling paralysis agitans in natives of the Eastern Highlands of Australian New Guinea. Med J Aust 1957 Nov 23: 2: 745-754. 

^[17] Gajdusek DC, Zigas V. Untersuchungen über die Pathogenese von Kuru: eine klinische, pathologische und epidemiologische Untersuchung einer chronischen, progressiven, degenerativen und unter den Eingeborenen der Eastem Highlands von Neu Guinea epidemische Ausmasse erreichenden Erkrankung des Zentralnervensystems. Klin Wochenschr 1958,36: 445-459. 

^[18] Zigas V, Gajdusek DC. Kuru: clinical, pathological and epidemiological study of a recently discovered acute progressive degenerative disease of the central nervous system reaching ‘epidemic’ proportions among natives of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea. PNG Med J. 1959: 3: 1-24.

^[19] Gajdusek DC, Zigas V, Baker J. Studies on kuru. III. Patterns of kuru incidence: demographic and geographic epidemiological analysis. Am J Trop Med Hyg 1961: 10: 599-627.   

^[20] Collinge J, Whitfield J, Mckintosh E, Frosh A, Mead S, Hill AF, Brandner S, Thomas D, Alpers MP. A clinical study of kuru patients with long incubation periods at the end of the epidemic in Papua New Guinea. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008; 363: 3725-3739. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0068)  

^[21] Scragg RER. Kuru memories from 1957. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008: 363.3661-3663. (doi: 10.1098/rstb.2008.4028)

^[22] Gomea T. ‘We had to climb mountains and cross fast-flowing rivers’. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008; 363:3644. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.4012)

^[23] Reid LMH. Memories of kuru while at Okapa Papua New Guinea in 1957. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008; 363:3657-3659. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.4026)

^[24] Gajdusek DC. An ‘auto-immune’ reaction against human tissue antigens in certain chronic diseases. Nature 1957: 179:666-668.

^[25] Gajdusek DC. Unconventional viruses and the origin and disappearance of kuru. In: Les Prix Nobel en 1976. The Nobel Foundation. Stockholm: PA Norstedt and Soner, 1977:167-216.

^[26] Gajdusek DC, Gibbs CJ, Jr, Aplers MP. Experimental transmission of a kuru-like syndrome to chimpanzees. Nature 1966;209:794-796.

^[27] Gibbs CJ Jr, Gajdusek DC, Asher DM, Alpers MP, Beck E, Daniel PM, Matthews WB. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (spongiform encephalopathy): 1968;161:388-489.

^[28] Londenbaum S. First impressions of the Fore. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008;363:3648-3649. (doi:10 1098/rstb.2008.4017)

^[29] Lindenbaum S. Understanding kuru: the contribution of anthropology and medicine. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci.2008;363:3715-3720. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0072)

^[30]  Beasley A. Richard Hornbook’s first impressions of kuru and Okapa. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008;363:3626-3627. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.4004)

^[31] Mathews JD. The changing face of kuru: a personal perspective. Philos Tarns R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008;363:3626-3679-3684. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0085)

^[32] Alpers MP. Some tributes to research colleagues and other contributors to our knowledge about kuru. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008;363:3614-6317. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.4000)

^[33] Alpers MP. The epidemiology of kuru: monitoring the epidemic from its peak to its end. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008;363:3707-3713. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0071)

^[34] Collinge J, Whitfield J, Mckintosh E, Frosh A, Mead S, Hill AF, Brandner S, Thomas D, Alpers MP. A clinical study of kuru patients with long incubation periods at the end of the epidemic in Papua New Guinea. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008; 363: 3725-3739. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0068). Whitfield JT, Pako WH, Collinge J, Alpers MO. Mortuary rites of the South Fore and kuru. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008;363:3721-3724. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0074)

^[35] Gajdusek DC. Introduction of Taenia solium into West New Guinea with a note on an epidemic of burns from cysticercus epilepsy in the Ekari people of the Wissel Lakes area. PNG Med J 1978:21:329-342.  

^[36] Asher DM. Kuru memories of the NIH years. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008;363:3618-3625. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.4002)

^[37] Farquhar J. The expanded Laboratory of Collaborative and Field Research, Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2003-363-3634-3635. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2008.4010  

^[38] Benfante R. Reminiscences of an aspiring graduate student in the 1970s who worked on kuru-related projects with Dr Gajdusek. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008;363:3628. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.4005)

^[39] Pursiner SB. Novel proteinaceous infectious particles scrapie. Science 1982;216:136-144.  

^[40] Gajdusek DC. Kuru and its contribution to medicine Philos Trans R Lond B Biol Sci 2008;363:3697-3700. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0070)

^[41] Prusiner SB. Reflections on kuru. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008;363: 3654-3456. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.4024)

^[42] Spark C. Family man: the Papua New Guinean children of  D. Carleton Gajdusek. Oceania 2007; 77: 355-369.

^[43] Anua S. Daniel Carleton Gajdusek,  my father. PNG Med J 2010;  53: 65-66; Buwana L. How I knew Dr. Carleton Gajdusek, and remembering my life with Carleton. PNG Med J 2010; 53: 67-68; Ikabala L. Carleton, the champion hero. PNG Med J 2010; 53: 69.

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^[45] Gomea T. ‘We had to climb mountains and cross fast-flowing rivers’. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008; 363: 3644. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.4012); Bavasa A, ‘My adopted daughter and then my second wife died of kuru’. Philos Trans R Philos Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008; 363: 3626 (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.4003); Pekiyeva T. ‘The children of those who died of kuru are today still alive’. Philos Trans R Philos Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008; 363:3653 (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.4022); Taguse T. ‘I was trained as an aid post orderly’. Philos Trans R Philos Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008; 363: 3668 (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.4032); Tasa K. ‘Collecting human samples was very hard owing to the fear of sorcery’. Philos Trans R Philos Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2008; 363: 3671 (doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.4034).