The Scientist : NewsBlog Print: Prion pioneer dies
The Scientist: NewsBlog:
Prion pioneer dies
Posted by Elie Dolgin
[Entry posted at 15th December 2008 07:18 PM GMT]

D. Carleton Gajdusek, a virologist and anthropologist who won the 1976 Nobel Prize for his work on the infectious brain agents now known as prions, died last Friday (Dec. 12) in Tromso, Norway. He was 85.

"He was a genius," Robert Klitzman, a psychiatrist at Columbia University in New York and Gajdusek's biographer, told The Scientist. "His brain was faster and at a higher level than anyone I've ever met."

In the 1950s, Gajdusek (pronounced Guy-dah-shek) began studying the Fore people
of the New Guinea highlands, a cannibalistic tribe that suffered from a neurological disorder known as "kuru," which left victims brains riddled with spongy holes. He suspected that the disease was transmitted by the Fore custom of ritualistically eating the brains of deceased ancestors, but he could not find ordinary signs of any pathogenic organism.

He injected mashed brains from kuru victims into chimpanzees' brains, and when the chimps developed kuru more than a year later, he theorized that slow-acting viruses were at work. By the late 1960s, Gajdusek and his colleagues had shown that kuru was not unique, but part of a hitherfore unknown group of diseases called spongiform encephalopathies.

"He turned on its head the whole [idea] that DNAs and RNAs are involved for all life," Klitzman said.

Not knowing the exact source of the disease, Gajdusek called the mysterious infectious agents "slow unconventional viruses" -- quite an appropriate name, according to Klitzman. "That he would seek to name a life form 'unconventional' was very indicative of the man," he said.

Gajdusek's original description of kuru, published in 1957 in the New England Journal of Medicine, has been cited around 300 times, according to ISI. His 1966 Nature paper describing kuru transmission to chimpanzees has been cited around 500 times.

Stanley Prusiner, a neurologist at University of California, San Francisco, later identified the infectious agents as tangles of rogue, misfolded proteins called prions. Prions are now recognized as the cause of kuru, human Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and so-called mad cow disease, as well as potentially triggering some dementias and cancers. Pruisner won his own Nobel in 1997.

Gajdusek also studied isolated communities around the world to investigate the genetics of other rare diseases including pseudo-hermaphroditism and Huntington's disease.

"[Gajdusek] was an outstanding and very unusual character," Lev Goldfarb, a neurologist at the NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) in Bethesda, Maryland, told The Scientist. "Ordinary colleagues like me would not be able to make the far-reaching comparisons and insights that he was able to make."

Gajdusek was born on September 9, 1923, in Yonkers, New York. He held a bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester, and a M.D. from Harvard Medical School.

In the 1950s, he worked at the Pasteur Institute in Iran and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research in Australia before joining the NIH in 1958. From 1970 to 1997, he headed up the NINDS.

In 1997, Gajdusek became embroiled in controversy after he was charged with molesting several of the young boys that he had adopted while on expeditions to the Pacific. After pleading guilty to one charge and serving a year in prison, he spent the remainder of his life living in Europe.

"He has a rather complex legacy," Klitzman said. "On the one hand, I don't think it detracted from what he did as a scientist. But as a man or human being or humanitarian, we have to look at all the aspects of his life." Gajdusek remained unapologetic about his sexual relationships, and asserted that sex with young men was customary in the cultures he studied, Klitzman added.

"He was divided between the cultures," said Goldfarb. "What he would consider absolutely normal over there is not normal over here. He never fully accepted the realities of this culture."

Although Gajdusek won his Nobel Prize for work on infectious diseases, Gajdusek himself saw his anthropological research as his most significant achievement, said Klitzman. "He [felt] that his biggest contribution was showing that you could take someone born in the Stone Age, bring them to this country... and someone could jump through 5000 years of human society and cultural advancement in one lifetime."


Related stories:
  • Prion hypothesis proven?
    [21st April 2005]
  • Portals for prions?
    [23rd July 2001]
  • Prions' changeability
    [10th May 1999]

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    Suns magnetic field initiating hot spots from linear to spirality
    by Sankara Velayudhan Nandakumar

    [Comment posted 2009-01-02 03:35:08]
    S.Nandakumar Oxford astro physics,uk at KNSK Engineering college ,nano tech writesThis paper is with reference to deBrogle photon reflective dynamics based on electron bunching forming differentiable deBrogle crystal lattice that relax from spinning to linearity and vice versa contributing typical inductive magnetic fields of hot spots responsible for air affined viruses between sun's movement on Libra-scorpio quntum sectors especially during oct-Nov out of Sun's 11 year cycle.This further investigates the crystal lattice electron bunching out of typical refelective electron bunching that forms typical vertices forming the reflective graphics square,triangular ,hexa ,penta vertices forming Konisbeye bridge perhaps due toEuler-Hassen vertices responsible for deBrogle-Cayle vertices reflected on hydrocarbon bonding vertices of short path trees of matrices for formation of viruses out of Kondu-coper relaxation temperature.



    prion activity due to linear polarisation towards spirality
    by Sankara Velayudhan Nandakumar

    [Comment posted 2008-12-18 22:50:17]
    The investigation of hydrogen water affinity on neuron behaviour requires more attention.a paper in this regard is submitted for the kind perusal of your readers and for feedback please.Diiferentiated electron bunching with phonon linkages.doc remove [Incident: 081218-000135Your call CNSHD739584 regarding Diiferentiated electron bunching with phonon linkages.doc has been received by Hubble.
    Sun?s boundary emitting differentiable matter waves out of deBrogle crystal lattice oscillations:
    This paper deals with the possible dipole-phonon bunches involved in Solar boundary magnetic field forming the deBrogle crystal lattice oscillation to emit relative waves along light shift planes oscillate between linear to circular polarization on the twelve magneto optic quantum sectors of sun.
    Differentiating dipole moments along phonon linkages along square,triangular,hexa,penta ,circular ,ellipsoidal electron bunching magnetron to produce typical emissions as boundary scattering with reference to deBrogle crystal lattice scattering involves a magnetron bunching combinations in space domains. This force seems to be attractive when resonated below the resonance frequency and repulsive when resonated below the frequency. The oscillating electric field exerts a force on the electron bunch, the particles energy is increased in the electric field for a force of ejection that may be called the pilot wave ejection at typical deBrogle ejection dynamics which is operative in dark matter FWHM ejection dynamics.
    Such as oscillation driven below the natural frequency responds in phase with the driving force and exactly on resonance is  out of phase. at p.E=o.
    Such a scattering force but stronger than any other neutral particles for high momentum split up. We can say that electromagnetic field is split-up for matter wave reflections at 2d sin=nat sin(  at 25 degree reflections. Such a phase conjugation when involved in phonon split up in electrons is contributed for typical electron bunching for electron magnetron differentiation. This act as electron bunch lens that will be drawn towards regions of high intensity bunching of electrons adding the amplitude of electron incidence for further emissions, with the dipole electron phonon split-up driven by the incident force, probably generating water affined field out of triangular towards a square scattering. (Sun?s boundary emissions fire,air,earth,water affined)
    Solar magnetic field with a typical dark spots thus initiated contribute spirally inductive waves which are responsible for more virus carry over in air -water affined hydrogen burst ionized in space. More water affined emission is observed during June-July from the sun. (comparison with optic mollase ejection)
    (typical optical trap)
    Typical genetic inheritance observed during june-july as observed by the cross oscillation gravity (refer palm print of W,T,Stead and Lord Kitchner ,Field Marshall,England ,a cross at the end of travel line) enhanced out of square to triangular scattering in sun magnetic field boundary.
    Now the problem deal with the electron of long deBroglle wave length has a power law attraction by van der Walls force with1/z3 potential and away experience retarded potential of 1/z4 according to Cassimir force. with lifetime very frequency dependent.
    at the velocity recoiling and the polarization of optical molasses change the different points of solar magnetic hot` regions.
    A linearly polarized changed the different points changes the electron cloud up and down and the circularly polarized drives the cloud in a circle during Oct-Nov to deal with virus multiplicity under magnetic field cooling initiating hydrogen-oxygen bonding.
    An inverted pyramid trap out of mirror symmetry forming blue tuned by the configuration up at Libra ()sun.
    (photon recoiling observed at sun ?s magnetic field boundary)
    Conclusion: It is possible to observe water affined boundaries on the surface of sun emitting water vapour by the reduction in magnetic field from linearity to spiral oscillations, which can be compared with Encedalus (saturn?s moon) emissions with that on the sun during Jun-July out of a plano concavo oscillation of magnetic field levitation dynamics between inverted pyramid symmetry towards inward and outward ejections involved. The most important conclusion arrived at is in every quanta domain of solar boundary the magnetic field oscillate on having the net intensity force trapped as variable tarpping points of magnetron- electron bunching inside to have the deBrogle scattering to initiate at least four point pole shifts and the net linearity of polarization swings between linearity towards spirality.
    Astrogenetically a cross oscillation between linearity (horizontal +/-jw with variable dampness 
    S.Nandakumar on behalf of oxford astro coordinating with NASA-hubble space science at KNSK engineering college ,Anna University.
    publish my comments



    Death of D. Carleton Gajdusek
    by Michael Katz

    [Comment posted 2008-12-17 14:47:06]
    Your note about the death of Carleton Gajdusek fills many of us who knew him with sadness. He was an unusually gifted man, as your obituary appropriately states, but a tragic figure and he died alone, in a Nordic winter night.

    His accomplishments surely deserve a book and I was glad to learn that Dr. Robert Klitzman is writing his biography. There is an error in your note ? perhaps only an ambiguity ? that needs correction. Gajdusek did not name these suspect agents ?slow viruses.? This name derives from an article by Bjorn Sigurdsson, an Icelandic veterinary pathologist who referred not to ?slow viruses,? but to ?slow virus infections.? By this he meant that in the diseases he discussed ? scrapie, visna, and maedi -- all the steps of a viral infection were in place, but that the time frame of their progress was slow. With usage, the term became ?slow viruses.? I suspect that it was Gajdusek who added the qualification ?unconventional.? At least this was part of the title of an NIH publication that he and two of his colleagues authored in ? I believe ? 1964.

    As an aside, the anonymous writer of a previous blog seems to doubt the pathogenic function of prions. Perhaps also intransigence should be classified as a slow virus infection.



    Prion activity increased during dark spots of suns cycle
    by anonymous poster

    [Comment posted 2008-12-16 22:51:10]
    It is really a loss to all of us.Prion activity by virtuelly inceresed during the hot or dark spots of the sun is more during the 11 year cycle..This may be due to the linearity towards spirality magnetic fields of solar boundary electron-phonon interaction from dipole to four pole configuration which produces differentiable hydrogen bursts which affine water particles during oct-Nov initiate more virus activity while the sun moves through scorpio(Oct-nov) every year and research work is required on hydrogen bursts and ion excange activity. Triangular,Square ,circular,ellipsoidal collapse of deBrogle electron scattering for a HYDROGEN BURST on genetic affine dynamics in this aspect.
    S.Nandakumar ,oxford astro genetics,uk at Anna University,Tamilnadu ,India



    Error regarding prions
    by S M

    [Comment posted 2008-12-16 14:05:33]
    There's an error in the 8th graf where it states that prions are the cause of various disorders. Prusiner's work is doubted by some scientists and even the NIH remains uncommitted to the prion hypothesis, stating on their website (LINK"Researchers are examining whether the transmissible agent is, in fact, a prion."



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