Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Follow the author
OK
The Trembling Mountain: A Personal Account of Kuru, Cannibals, and Mad Cow Disease Paperback – August 7, 2001
Purchase options and add-ons
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.
- Print length344 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateAugust 7, 2001
- Dimensions6 x 0.87 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100738206148
- ISBN-13978-0738206141
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now
Popular titles by this author
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Dr. Robert Klitzman, currently an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, is the author of Being Positive: The Lives of Men and Women with HIV, A Year-Long Night: Tales of A Medical Internship and In a House of Dreams and Glass: Becoming a Psychiatrist. He graduated from Princeton University and Yale Medical School, and has been a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in scientific journals and textbooks, as well as the New York Times and other publications. He has recieved numerous honors and awards, including a Burroughs Wellcome Fellowship (for Future Leaders in Psychiatry) from the American Psychiatric Association, an Aaron Diamond Foundation Fellowship, and a Picker/Commonwealth Scholar Award. He has also been a Fellow at Yaddo and MacDowell.
Product details
- Publisher : Grand Central Publishing
- Publication date : August 7, 2001
- Language : English
- Print length : 344 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0738206148
- ISBN-13 : 978-0738206141
- Item Weight : 1 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.87 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #4,624,475 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #113 in Clinical Chemistry (Books)
- #1,053 in Viral Diseases (Books)
- #1,233 in Communicable Diseases (Books)
About the author

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






