The Trembling Mountain: A Personal Account of Kuru, Cannibals, and Mad Cow Disease

by Robert Klitzman

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0738206148
• ISBN13: 9780738206141
• Release Date: August 2001
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 2.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating

This book tells the story of a young man who travels to Papua New Guinea to try his hand at medical research. The book jackets accurately describes it as "a gripping medical mystery, an exotic travelogue, and a stirring coming-of-age story." Just one year out of college, Klitzman sets off to Papua New Guinea alone to work on a project arranged by Carleton Gajdusek to survey the incubation time for kuru. Klitzman soon finds himself living in the Highlands, where he spends his time seeking out former cannibals who are dying of kuru so that he can interview them about when they last ate human flesh.Klitzman's cultural insights are quite compelling- -instead of finding fault with all that frustrates him, he is able to put the difficulties in context and realize that people are much the same everywhere, underneath their material trappings. One of the fascinating facets of this book is that at the time when Klitzman was doing his research in PNG, kuru was dying out- -the project that he was working on was to find the incubation period for a disease without a future, or so it seemed at the time. When Mad Cow began popping up a few years after Klitzman finished his project, the results suddenly became extremely important for trying to estimate potential deaths due to tainted beef. The book serves as a good reminder that basic research may prove its worth long after the fact. The book's main narrative takes place in Papua New Guinea in 1983-84, 7 years after independence. It provides interesting historical documentation of living conditions in PNG in the time immediately following independence. In 1997, Klitzman returns to the area where he did his research, and observes how many aspects of life in PNG had deteriorated in the intervening time, despite the quantity of wealth coming into the country. For this reason, area specialists may find much of interest in Klitzman's detailed descriptions of living conditions in the early 1980s in PNG.

Strange Title - Amazing Adventure

I had read Dr Klitzman's earlier book "Being Positive" and wanted to read more of his work, the title sounded very strange but bought the book after the life affirming experience of reading the first. Dr Klitzman is one hell of an explorer !, brave, adventurous and a great medical investigator and researcher. The Papua New Guinea Highlands might hold the answers to the questions that medical researchers have been asking for years and Dr Klitzman is a trail blazer to these answers. This story deserves to be read by anyone who is affected directly or indirectly by any disease from cancer to HIV, it will give you a better insight and hope.

An extraordinary story by a gifted writer

Written with the intensity of a thriller, THE TREMBLING MOUNTAIN is a brilliant examination of the cultures of the mind. Read it now.

Kindred Spirit

I wonder if the author has knowledge of a similar book entitled "The Begining was the End" written by Oscar Kiss Maerth published by Sphere Books Ltd in 1974