Vwegba Blogging World

The Bizarre story of the ' laughing Death ' Epidemic caused by cannibalism in papua New Guinea  For much of the early 20th century, an Indigenous tribe in Papua New Guinea watched in horror as hundreds of their people died from a mysterious disease called kuru. Little did they know they were literally wiping themselves out — because of their ritual cannibalism.⁠ ⁠ As an act of grief, the Fore people ate their dead during and after funerals. This included consumption of the dead person's brain, which was later revealed to be key to the development of kuru. When researchers who were studying the tribe put two and two together, they were stunned. Luckily, most members of the Fore tribe had no problem giving up the ritual. The Fore people stopped practicing cannibalism around the late 1950s and early 1960s, but kuru cases continued to pop up amongst the tribe for over half a century. This was largely due to the fact that kuru sometimes took a while to develop, leaving former ca...