What is Kuru?
Kuru is a human prion disease that was identified only in the central highlands of Papua New Guinea. People of isolated tribes were cannibals practicing endocannibalism, the eating of close relatives, as a mourning rite. These rituals were discouraged and outlawed by the late 1950s and correspondingly the numbers of recorded cases declined and Kuru has now almost disappeared.
Kuru is a human prion disease that was identified only in the central highlands of Papua New Guinea. People of of the Fore and closely linked tribes practiced endocannibalism, the eating of close relatives, as a mourning rite. These rituals were discouraged and outlawed by the late 1950s and correspondingly the numbers of recorded cases declined. Kuru has now almost disappeared.
