This astonishing story links first-contact encounters in New Guinea with laboratory experiments in Bethesda, Maryland; sorcery with science; cannibalism with compassion; and slow viruses with infectious proteins, reshaping our understanding of what it means to do science.

For almost thirty years Warwick Anderson, medical doctor and historian of science, has been studying kuru, those who were affected by the disease, and the scientists who identified and investigated it. Based at the University of Sydney, he is the Janet Dora Hine Professor of Politics, Governance and Ethics in the Department of History. He is the author of Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines and the coauthor of Intolerant Bodies: A Short History of Autoimmunity.