The Trembling Mountain: A Personal Account of Kuru, Cannibals, and Mad Cow Disease [Paperback]

Robert Klitzman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 7, 2001

Kuru, like Mad Cow disease, is caused by a rare, infectious crystal protein that invades and colonizes human cells, destroying the nervous system of its victims. There is no known cure. It flourished in one of the remotest places on earth, Papua New Guinea, among the Fore, a people living in the Stone Age, who until recently practiced ritual cannibalism, consuming the brains of their forebears during funerary feasts. Robert Klitzman helped establish the links between these rituals and kuru. What he discovered has provided keys to understanding the mysterious Mad Cow Disease, which may become the world's next major epidemic. Robert Klitzman was 21 years old when he was invited by the Nobel prize-winning scientist Dr. Carleton Gajdusek, then at the National Institutes of Health, to conduct original research on kuru. Seizing the chance to travel to the other end of the world, Klitzman embarked on an adventure that would change his life.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The key word here is personal. Physician Robert Klitzman tells us his life story and humanizes what could easily have been a tabloid-size horror story of Stone Age cannibals and rotten-brained cows. Vivid portraits of the men and women he helped and worked with lift this book above mere sensationalism, showing one people's tragedy in the hopes that others can be averted.

Kuru is a fatal disease formerly epidemic among the Fore people of New Guinea, with symptoms including involuntary laughing, dementia, and loss of motor control. Traced to their ritual cannibalism, it was found to be caused by nonliving crystal-like proteins in the brain. Klitzman traveled to New Guinea before attending medical school to work with these people and quickly learned how little Western medicine could do for the afflicted--he could only make their deaths as comfortable as possible. His despair is palpable.

Fortunately, most Fore have been convinced to give up the most dangerous of their ancestral practices, and the disease has largely abated. But mad cow disease (and others like it), caused by the same class of protein as kuru, remains a threat to Westerners--a threat Klitzman would rather we not face. His very personal story forces us as readers to examine our own lives and our own ancestral practices, perhaps to make some changes ourselves. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Between his undergraduate years at Princeton and medical school at Yale, Klitzman spent a year conducting basic epidemiological research in Papua, New Guinea. Here, as in his books covering his medical internship (A Year-Long Night) and psychiatric training (In a House of Dreams and Glass), he presents an engaging autobiographical account of his experiences. Working for Nobel Prize-winner (Physiology/Medicine, 1976) Carleton Gajdusek in 1981, Klitzman lived amid the Fore, a previously cannibalistic tribe in some of the most remote parts of the country. Their community had been devastated by kuru, a deadly and heartbreaking neurological disease, spread by the ritual consumption of deceased relatives (including brain matter). Over the course of the narrative, the young Klitzman interviews stricken individuals, comes to grips with hugely divergent cultures and comes of age himself. What gives kuru additional and timely import, and makes it more than just an odd tropical malady, is that it appears to be closely related to Mad Cow disease. Despite the subtitle, however, the link between the two diseases, while very real, is not lingered over by Klitzman. But even stripped of the headlines, his scientific adventure story, although occasionally reflecting a na?ve and self-centered young man, is a briskly engaging and informative work. 75 photos.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (August 7, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738206148
• ISBN-13: 978-0738206141
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,731,635 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University, where I direct the Masters of Bioethics Program.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, April 14, 2002

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Erika Mitchell (E. Calais, VT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Trembling Mountain: A Personal Account of Kuru, Cannibals, and Mad Cow Disease (Paperback)

This book tells the story of a young man who travels to Papua New Guinea to try his hand at medical research. The book jackets accurately describes it as "a gripping medical mystery, an exotic travelogue, and a stirring coming-of-age story." Just one year out of college, Klitzman sets off to Papua New Guinea alone to work on a project arranged by Carleton Gajdusek to survey the incubation time for kuru. Klitzman soon finds himself living in the Highlands, where he spends his time seeking out former cannibals who are dying of kuru so that he can interview them about when they last ate human flesh.

Klitzman's cultural insights are quite compelling- -instead of finding fault with all that frustrates him, he is able to put the difficulties in context and realize that people are much the same everywhere, underneath their material trappings. One of the fascinating facets of this book is that at the time when Klitzman was doing his research in PNG, kuru was dying out- -the project that he was working on was to find the incubation period for a disease without a future, or so it seemed at the time. When Mad Cow began popping up a few years after Klitzman finished his project, the results suddenly became extremely important for trying to estimate potential deaths due to tainted beef. The book serves as a good reminder that basic research may prove its worth long after the fact.

The book's main narrative takes place in Papua New Guinea in 1983-84, 7 years after independence. It provides interesting historical documentation of living conditions in PNG in the time immediately following independence. In 1997, Klitzman returns to the area where he did his research, and observes how many aspects of life in PNG had deteriorated in the intervening time, despite the quantity of wealth coming into the country. For this reason, area specialists may find much of interest in Klitzman's detailed descriptions of living conditions in the early 1980s in PNG.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Foaming at the Mouth about New Guinea, December 24, 2007

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Cardiff Camel "cardiffcamel" (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Trembling Mountain: A Personal Account of Kuru, Cannibals, and Mad Cow Disease (Paperback)

This is a really awful book - embarrassingly bad writing (p.205 "How was your trip?" Roger asked with disgust, foaming at the mouth." Page 276: "Ray's blue eyes exploded in ecstasy as he spied a butterfly.") Also, there are many sentences that one must skip or pause to decipher because the sentence just doesn't make any sense. (Who the heck edited this book?)

The book contains precious little about Kuru and less about cannibalism. Also there is not much on Mad Cow Disease. There is here lots and lots and lots of Robert Klitzman. But, even as a "personal account," this book is sadly not very interesting or readable. (Maybe if the author had published this as an edited journal date by date, it would have worked a bit better. Ah, maybe not.)

We read that there amid the fleas and the smelly New Guinea people he thinks about his future. "I decided that I wanted to live an active life, engaged with the world. What I had seen and learned intellectually from Carlton [Gajdusekan - Nobel Prize winner and "sadly" convicted pedophile] was living life. Literary critics [and presumably editors] missed the point by being too analytic and petty, I thought."

This is essentially a vanity publication [and rip-off of the reading public]. Perhaps it is interesting to some relative or close friend of the author (though I doubt it). While the author can add this title to his list of publications, the author should pray that no future writing monies ever depend on the quality of this book.

I cannot imagine any reason anyone would waste his/her time or money on this dreadful book.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars incredible, January 10, 2011

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This review is from: The Trembling Mountain (Hardcover)

really wonderful account of a man's journey to a foreign land. i've read my fair share of books like this and Klitzman is the first person i am not annoyed with in some form or another. He is incredibly aware of the plight of the people he is helping and is concerned not only for the well being of the tribe but the whole system of different tribes that work together around Kuru mountain.