Deadly Feasts: Ch. 12 & 13 Quotes

• "From the wiry five-foot eight, one- hundred-and-forty-pounder of his early kuru days, when he hiked up and down the sides of mountains on two meals a day...with silver hair, a broad, corpulent face, and shrewd, deep-set eyes...He traveled the world continuously,... investigating rare and puzzling diseases." (pg.193)

This quote is significant because it helps readers visualize how Carleton Cajdusek became throughout the years of studying diseases. This image demonstrates the intelligence and passion that Carleton had during his work on kuru.

• "But attacking TSE agents such as radiation that destroy nucleic acid still leaves the agent infectious." (pg. 194)

This quote significant because this was Gajdusek's first hypothesis that he derived from the information that was given to him through his research. In this quote he discovered that since using radiation still left some infectious agents, there had to be other reproductive process involved. And soon he realized that the reproduction was called crystallization.

• "Suddenly, then, Gajdusek and his colleagues found themselves looking at two kinds of brain amyloidosis: infectious (the TSEs) and noninfectious (Alzheimer's)." (pg. 198)

This quote is significant because the discovery of the two kinds of brain amyloidosis brought many researchers and new money to the field. Additionally, this new information that Gajdusek concluded with made chemist more knowledgeable about the crystallization processes and the repetition of molecules.

• " Stephan Dorrell's Announce in Parliament of ten cases of Creutztedlt-Jakob disease attributed to eating infected beef produced world-war-scale headlines throughout Britain and Europe." (pg. 213)

This quote is significant because this attributed to many social and ethical problems in society. Specifically, British schools' concerns led to the ban of beef in cafeterias. Beef sales also plummeted and the prices of beef were cut in half. 

• " Worse, a minimum incubation period of ten years, a reasonable estimate, would put the origin of those cases back at the beginning of the BSE epidemic, when the number of infected animals entering the human food supply was small-- implying that many more deaths might follow from the increasing human exposure to infected beef in the later 1980s."

This quote is significant because the people who were affected by infected beef can cause other people in a critical state if blood other parts of the body was donated. In addition, the increase of human exposure to infected beef lead to more deaths because cows can spread the kuru to other animals such as chicken. Chicken was normally fed bones and meat of cows, thus causing chicken to be also an another infected resource.

Deadly Feasts: Ch. 10 & 11 Words

1. elusive (adj)
difficult to catch 
(pg. 154)

2. aficionado (n)

an ardent supporter or devotee (pg. 154)

3. Amyloidoses (n)
a deposit of amyloid  in tissues or organs.
(pg. 157)

4. fibrils (n)
a small or fine fiber or filament. any of the delicate hairs on the young roots of some plants.
(pg. 158)

5. incubated (v)
to develop; grow; take form
(pg. 160)

6. preemption (n)

the act or right of claiming or purchasing before or in preference to others.

(pg. 163)

7. carcasses (n)

the dead body of an animal

(pg. 172)

8. bovine (adj)

oxlike; cowlike

(pg. 173)

9. tallow (n)

the fatty tissue or suet of animals.

(pg. 177)

10. thymus (n)

a glandular organ of vertebrates, consisting in man of two lobessituated below the thyroid

(pg. 179)

Deadly Feasts: Connection 6 Discussion

Chapter 7

• What did British researchers attack samples of scrapie tissue with? (pg. 114)
• What did the nuclues contain more of? (pg 115)
• How does the DNA double helix make copies of itself? (pg. 116) 
• Did cells need the entire DNA sequence to make a protein? Why? (pg. 116)
• Was there bacteria found in the Scrapie-infected tissue? (pg. 119)
• What did bacteria proved to be like? (pg. 119)
• The scrapie agent can survive through what conditions? (pg.120)
• How did Richard Rhodes define "strains" ?(pg. 123)
• What did the French researchers point out about Scrapie? (pg. 125)
• What was Griffith's first and second way to make a scrapie agent? (pg. 126)

Chapter 8

• In 1971, what damage was conflicted upon the women who experienced seeing halos around lights? (pg. 131)
• What did the Viennese physician call the women's condition to be? (pg. 131)
• What did the women began to experience a year after her eye surgery? (pg. 133)
• What did Carleton Gajdusek and Joe Gibbs discover that could kill the scrapie agent? (pg. 134)
• Why did Carleton Gajdusek receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine? (pg. 135)
• What did Gajdusek hear about the 2 of Bernoulli's young patients? (pg. 138)
• What was the instrument of contamination called? (pg. 138)
• What did the pregnant women experience? (pg. 138)
• What did Carleton Gajdusek note about infectious nucleic acids? (pg. 140)
• What other body secretions did Carleton Gajdusek's lab test? (pg 140)

Chapter 9

• What is the origin of the discovery of human growth hormone? (pg. 143)
• What did Alan Dickinson realize about the procedure that MRC was using? (pg. 144)
• How did Dickinson describe the use of stockpile hormone? (pg. 144)
• What did JRo, a California boy, suffer from? (pg. 145)
• How did JRo's mother describe JRo before he experienced the symptoms of dizziness? (pg. 146)
• After JRo ended up in the hospital, what did Hintz notice about JRo? (pg. 146)
• What did JRo develop that led to his death?
• What were the symptoms of the two young patients fit for the CJD profile? (pg. 148)
• What was the difference between the two patients? (pg. 148)
• In a German firm, what did researchers use to process the transplanted dura mater tissue? (pg. 151)

Deadly Feasts: Connection 4 & 5 Sketch

Chapter 5 &6

Sketch Master

In Gajdusek's laboratory, lab-technician assistant, Mike Sulima discovered the change of behavior of a kuru patient. In the laboratory, technicians were experimenting on monkeys about the affects of kuru. In addition, on June 28, Sulima was the first to notice a change in a kuru patient namede Georgette. Georgette is a monkey. Through the change of behavior of Georgette, it is obvious that kuru can cause strange behavior. Specifically, Georgette became less active and had a vacant look in her eyes.In addition, her jaws would hang open and her body would tremble in frequent intervals. Consequently, in my opinion, people or animals who are infected with kuru would have inactive and indolent actions. For instance," ...she would suddenly grope for the food that was right there in front of her and how her hand would shake when she would bring the food up."

Through the actions of the monkey, Georgette, we can obviously conclude that kuru have a negative effect and a decomposing affect to the brain. Nonetheless, I just learned another disease that lead to negative affects to the body. Specifically, kuru creates a indolent affect to the body. In addtionally, the personality and mindset have changed from active to passive. The condition of the monkey also ties connections back to the first scenario of the cannibals. Even though researchers were unsure of the real problem of cannibals, however kuru may be the solution. Damage to the brain can alter a person's or an animal's way of thinking and action. Looking back, these obscure conditions may be the reasons why people became cannibals.

Deadly Feasts: Connection 3 Words

Chapter 4

Third Connection: Word Master

1. Polio (noun)
Polio is a viral disease that was most common in the first half of the 20th century. Polio affects the spinal cord and causes muscle weakness and paralysis. (page 67)

2. inoculation (noun)
The act or an instance of inoculating, especially the introductionof an antigenic substance or vaccine into the body to produceimmunity to a specific disease.(page 69)

3. epidemiological (adjective)
the branch of medicine dealing with the incidence and prevalenceof disease in large populations and with detection of the source. (page 70)

4. lesion (noun)
an injury; hurt; wound. (page72)

5. pestilence (noun)
a deadly or virulent epidemic disease. (page 71)

6. pallid (adjective)
pale; faint or deficient in color(page 71)

7. barren (adjective)
not producing or incapable of producing offspring (page 71)

8. primate (noun)
any of various omnivorous mammals of the order Primates,comprising the three suborders Anthropoidea (humans, greatapes, gibbons, Old World monkeys, and New World monkeys),Prosimii (lemurs, loris, and their allies), and Tarsioidea(tarsiers), especially distinguished by the use of hands,varied locomotion, and by complex flexible behavior involving a high level of social interaction and cultural adaptability. (page 73)

9. cadavers (noun)
a dead body, especially a human body to be dissected; corpse. (page 81)

10. irrevocable (adjective)
not to be revoked or recalled; unable to be repealed or annulled;unalterable. (page 79)

Deadly Feasts: Connection 2 Sketch

Chapter 3

On August 11, a women died due to an unknown explanation of damage in the brain. She was a maid named Bertha Elschker, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease. Originally a cheerful person, she no longer became concerned about her appearance a month later. I pictured this women to be dirty and filthy after she got Alzheimer's disease. In addition, there must be seriously something wrong with her brain. I also pictured her talking to herself and screaming crazy things out in the streets about her family. The mental illness also made her twitch which makes me picture her as someone really ill. Not only was she suffering from physical damage in her brain, but also physical damage in her arm and speech as well.

The image that I portray from the descriptions of the women, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, connects with me because many discoveries of new diseases derive from the observations of other diseases. Although, doctors and scientist do not the reason of the disease at first, making connections with other disease such as CJD, helps them reach a conclusion. In addition, similar to the Kuru disease I learned that this new disease is characterized. Kuru was a stereotyped sickness, while the disease that the women suffered mostly pertain to middle aged people. These two obscure, brain disorders show that the brain is the single most complex organ in the body. As a result, any kind of damage to the brain can create a huge problem to our body physically and mentally.

Deadly Feast: Connection 1 Map

Chapter 1 & 2

Diamonte

Carbon compounds
abundant, organic
living, short living
diverse, uniform -- lack carbon, hydrogen atoms
nonliving, lacking
inanimate, inorganic
inorganic compounds