Stanley’s Dream: The Medical Expedition to Easter Island by Jacalyn Duffin (review)

The major difference between the New Guinea and Rapa Nui expeditions is that Gajdusek was awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his discovery of the first “slow virus,” later found to be a prion, a wholly new mechanism of human disease causation, whereas Skoryna was awarded noth...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Bulletin of the History of Medicine 2021-07, Vol.95 (2), p.269-271
Main Author: Anderson, Warwick
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ecologists
Ecology
Medicine
Polynesian languages
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The major difference between the New Guinea and Rapa Nui expeditions is that Gajdusek was awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his discovery of the first “slow virus,” later found to be a prion, a wholly new mechanism of human disease causation, whereas Skoryna was awarded nothing at all. (Another parallel since Burnet happened to be Gajdusek’s disaffected mentor.) Apparently, Hungarian-Canadian micro-biologist Georges L. Nógrády, another expedition leader, also was enthralled by ecosystems thinking and issues of planetary sustainability, hoping to learn something on Rapa Nui about how humans might adapt genetically and sociologically to environmental degradation and increasing interconnection. Duffin dedicates a large section of the book to justifying the importance of the expedition’s research, which reminded me of the early histories of French colonial medicine dedicated to assaying whether scattered Pastorians had made any real scientific breakthroughs.
ISSN:0007-5140
1086-3176
1086-3176
1896-3176
DOI:10.1353/bhm.2021.0020