WG: FW: Yanomami: Turner to Katz (fwd)

see before

> ----------
> Von:  splain@hawaii.edu[SMTP:splain@hawaii.edu]
> Gesendet:     Dienstag, 3. Oktober 2000 10:13
> An:   Arno.Tausch@bmsg.gv.at
> Betreff:      Fwd: FW: Yanomami: Turner to Katz (fwd)
> 
> ------------- Begin Forwarded Message -------------
> 
> Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000 21:03:00 -1000
> From: Richard Rohde <rohde@hawaii.edu>
> To: uhanth-l@hawaii.edu
> Subject: FW: Yanomami: Turner to Katz (fwd)
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000 15:15:16 -1000
> From: Bradd Shore <antbs@emory.edu>
> Reply-To: Society for Psychological Anthropology List
>     <SPA@LISTSERV.CC.EMORY.EDU>
> Subject: FW: Yanomami: Turner to Katz (fwd)
> 
> Here's a response by Terry Turner to a letter (not incluided) by Dr. Katz.
> To help you draw your own conclusions, I am reprinting Turner's original
> letter below it. Bradd
> 
> Date: Fri Sep 29, 2000 1:45am
> Subject: Turner responds to Katz
> 
> September 28, 2000
> 
> Dear Dr. Katz,
> 
>               Thank you for your message concerning the Edmonston B
> vaccine. Now that I have had a chance to research the matter myself, I am
> in
> complete agreement with you. Let me explain something about the memo I and
> my colleague Leslie Sponsel sent, as a confidential document, to the
> President and President-elect of the American Anthropological Association,
> with copy to the chair of the Committee for Human Rights. We were sent
> advance copies of the galley proofs of Tierney's book, in which he makes
> the
> alleegations we describe in our memo. The sole purpose of the memo was to
> describe these allegations, in order to warn the leaders of the
> association
> of the nature of the allegations that were about to be published (the
> publication of Tierney's long article in the New Yorker, now scheduled for
> this coming Monday, was supposedly only two weeks away at the time) and
> the
> scandal they would probably cause for the whole profession. The purpose
> was
> not to describe the actual events to which the allegations referred--a
> distinction that has been lost by many who have reacted to the memo since
> it
> was circulated without our permission. Checking the veracity of the
> allegations for ourselves was not germane to the immediate, and limited
> purpose of the memo, which was to warn about what Tierney was about to
> publish. However, having sent the memo (which was around the world within
> days) we did set about doing our best to check on its more shocking
> allegations, particularly those concerning Dr. Neel's vaccination program
> and his use of the Edmonston vaccine.
>         One of the authorities we consulted was Dr. Peter Aaby, a
> well-known
> medical anthropologist and member of the Scandinavian medical team team
> that
> has been working on measles in West Africa for some twenty years. He has
> gone over the claims about the vaccine made by Tierney and refuted them
> point by point, in very much the same terms that you have used.
>       We are in the process of preparing a memo that will state our own
> understanding of this matter, to help correct the confusion that the
> unauthorized circulation of our earlier memo. Thank you for your message.
> 
> Yours sincerely,
> 
> Terry Turner
> 
> http://www.egroups.com/message/evolutionary-psychology/7470
> -------------
> 
> Terry Turner's original letter:
> 
> To: Louise Lamphere, President, American Anthropological Association
>  (lamphere@un>
>  Don Brenneis, President -elect, American Anthropological Association
>  (brenneis@cats.ucsc.edu)
> 
>  From: Terry Turner, Professor of Anthropology, Cornell University.  Head
> of
> the Special Commission of the American Anthropological Association to
> Investigate the Situation of the Brazilian Yanomami, 1990-91
> tst3@cornell.edu
> 
> Leslie Sponsel, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii,
> Manoa. Chair of the AAA Committee for Human Rights 1992-1996
> (sponsel@hawaii.edu)
> 
> In re: Scandal about to be caused by publication  of  book by Patrick
> Tierney (Darkness in El Dorado. New York. Norton.  Publication date:
> October
> 1, 2000).
> 
> Madam President, Mr. President-elect:
> 
>         We write to inform you of an impending scandal that will affect
> the American Anthropological profession as a whole in the eyes of the
> public, and arouse intense indignation and calls for action among members
> of the Association. In its scale, ramifications, and sheer criminality and
> corruption it is unparalleled in the history of Anthropology. The AAA will
> be called upon by the general media and its own membership to take
> collective stands on the issues it raises, as well as appropriate
> redressive actions. All of this will obviously involve you as Presidents
> of the Association-so the sooner you know about the story that is about to
> break, the better prepared you can be to deal with it. Both of us have
> seen galley copies of a book by Patrick Tierney, an investigative
> journalist, about the actions of anthropologists and associated scientific
> researchers (notably geneticists and medical experimenters) among the
> Yanomami of Venezuela over the past thirty-five years.  Because of the
> sensational nature of its revelations, the notoriety of the people it
> exposes, and the prestige of the organs of the academic establishment it
> implicates, the book is bound to be widely read both outside and inside
> the profession. As both an indication and a vector of its public impact,
> we have learned that The New Yorker magazine is planning to publish an
> extensive excerpt, timed to coincide with the publication of the book (on
> or about October 1st).
> 
>         The focus of the scandal is the long-term project for study of the
> Yanomami of Venezuela organized by James Neel, the human geneticist, in
> which Napoleon Chagnon, Timothy Asch, and numerous other anthropologists
> took part. The French anthropologist Jacques Lizot, who also works with
> the Yanomami but is not part of Neel-Chagnon project, also figures in a
> different scandalous capacity.
> 
>         One of Tierney's more startling revelations is that the whole
> Yanomami project was an outgrowth and continuation of the Atomic Energy
> Comissions secret program of experiments on human subjects James Neel, the
> originator and director of the project, was part of the medical and
> genetic research team attached to the Atomic Energy Commission since the
> days of the Manhattan Project. He was a member of the small group of
> researchers responsible for studying the effects of radiation on human
> subjects. He personally headed the team that investigated the effects of
> the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs on survivors,. He was put in charge of
> the study of the effects of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and
> later was involved in the studies of the effects of the radioactivity from
> the experimental A and H bomb blasts in the Marshall Islands on the
> natives (our colleague May Jo Marshall has a lot to say about these
> studies in the Marshalls and Neel's role in them). The same group also
> secretly carried out experiments on human subjects in the USA. These
> included injecting people with radioactive plutonium without their
> knowledge or permission,in some cases leading to their death or
> disfigurement (Neel himself appears not to have given any of these
> experimental injections). Another member of the same AEC group of human
> geneticists and medical experimenters, a Venezuelan, Marcel Roche, was a
> close colleague of Neel's and spent some time at his AEC-funded center for
> Human Genetics at Ann Arbor. He returned to Venezuela after the war and
> did a study of the Yanomami that involved administering doses of a
> radioactive isotope of iodine and analyzing samples of blood for genetic
> data. Roche and his project were apparently the connection that led Neel
> to choose the Yanomami for his big study of the genetics of "leadership"
> and differential rates of reproduction among dominant and sub-dominant
> males in a genetically "isolated" human population.
> 
>         There is thus a genealogical connection between the he human
> experiments carried out by the AEC, and Neel's and Chagnon's Yanomami
> project, which was from the outset funded by the AEC. Tierney presents
> convincing evidence that Neel and Chagnon, on their trip to the Yanomami
> in 1968, greatly exacerbated, and probably started, the epidemic of
> measles that killed "hundreds, perhaps thousands" (Tierney's language-the
> exact figure will never be known) of Yanomami. The epidemic appears to
> have been caused, or at least worsened and more widely spread, by a
> campaign of vaccination carried out by the research team, which used a
> virulent vaccine (Edmonson B) that had been counter-indicated by medical
> experts for use on isolated populations with no prior exposure to measles
> (exactly the Yanomami situation). Even among populations with prior
> contact and consequent partial genetic immunity to measles, the vaccine
> was supposed to be used only with supportive injections of gamma globulin.
> 
>         It was known to produce effects virtually indistinguishable from
> the disease of measles itself.  Medical experts, when informed that Neel
> and his group used the vaccine in question on the Yanomami, typically
> refuse to believe it at first, then say that it is incredible that they
> could have done it, and are at a loss to explain why they would have
> chosen such an inappropriate and dangerous vaccine. There is no record
> that Neel sought any medical advice before applying the vaccine. He never
> informed the appropriate organs of the Venezuelan government that his
> group was planning to carry out a vaccination campaign, as he was legally
> required to do.
> 
>         Neither he nor any other member of the expedition, including
> Chagnon and the other anthropologists, has ever explained why that vaccine
> was used, despite the evidence that it actually caused or at a minimum
> greatly exacerbated the fatal epidemic.
> 
>         Once the measles epidemic took off, closely following the
> vaccinations with Edmonson B, the members of the research team refused to
> provide any medical assistance to the sick and dying Yanomami, on explicit
> orders from Neel. He insisted to his colleagues that they were only there
> to observe and record the epidemic, and that they must stick strictly to
> their roles as scientists, not provide medical help.
> 
>         All this is bad enough, but the probable truth that emerges, by
> implication, from Tierney's documentation is more chilling. There was, it
> turns out, a compelling theoretical motive for Neel to want to observe an
> epidemic of measles, or comparable "contact" disease, or at least an
> outbreak virtually indistinguishable from the real thing-precisely the
> effect that the vaccine he chose was known to cause-and to produce one for
> this purpose if necessary. This motive emerges from Teirney's
> documentation of Neel's extreme eugenic theories and his documented
> statements about what he was hoping to find among the Yanomami,
> interpreted against the background of his long association with the Atomic
> Energy Commission's secret experiments on human subjects.  Neel believed
> that "natural" human society (as it existed everywhere before the advent
> of large-scale agricultural societies and contemporary states with their
> vast populations)consisted of small, genetically isolated groups, in
> which, according to his eugenically slanted genetic theories, dominant
> genes (specifically, a gene he believed existed for "leadership" or
> "innate ability") would have a selective advantage, because male carriers
> of this gene could gain access to a disproportionate share of the
> available females, thus reproducing their own superior genes more
> frequently than less "innately able" males.
> 
>         The result, supposedly, would be the continual upgrading of the
> human genetic stock. Modern mass societies, by contrast, consist of vast
> genetically entropic "herds" in which, he theorized, recessive genes could
> not be eliminated by selective competition and superior leadership genes
> would be swamped by mass genetic mediocrity. The political implication of
> this fascistic eugenics is clearly that society should be reorganized into
> small breeding isolates in which genetically superior males could emerge
> into dominance, eliminating or subordinating the male losers in the
> competition for leadership and women, and amassing harems of brood
> females.
>         A big problem for this program, however, was the tendency,
> generally recognized by virtually all qualified population geneticists and
> epidemiologists, for small breeding isolates to lack genetic resistance to
> diseases incubated in other groups, and their consequent vulnerability to
> contact epidemics. For Neel, this meant that the emergence of genetically
> superior males in small breeding isolates would tend to be undercut and
> neutralized by epidemic diseases to which they would be genetically
> vulnerable, while the supposedly genetically entropic mass societies of
> modern democratic states, the antitheses of Neel's ideal
> alpha-male-dominated groups, would be better adapted for developing
> genetic immunity to such "contact" diseases. It is known that Neel,
> virtually alone among contemporary geneticists, rejected the genetic (and
> historical)evidence for the vulnerability of genetically isolated groups
> to diseases introduced through contact from other populations. It is
> possible that he thought that genetically superior members of such groups
> might prove to have differential levels of immunity and thus higher rates
> of survival to imported diseases. In such a case, such exogenous
> epidemics, despite the enormous losses of general population they inflict,
> might actually be shown to increase the relative proportion of genetically
> superior individuals to the total population, and thus be consistent with
> Neel's eugenic program.
> 
>         However this may have been, Tierney's well-documented account, in
> its entirety, strongly supports the conclusion that the epidemic was in
> all probabilty deliberately caused as an experiment designed to produce
> scientific support for Neel's eugenic theory.  This remains only an
> inference in the present state of our knowledge: there is no "smoking gun"
> in the form of a written text or recorded speech by Neel. It is
> nevertheless the only explanation that makes sense of a number of
> otherwise inexplicable facts, including Neel's known interest in observing
> an epidemic in a small isolated group for which detailed records of
> genetic and genealogical relations were available, his otherwise
> inexplicable selection of a virulent vaccine known to produce effects
> virtually identical with the disease itself, his behavior once the
> epidemic had started (insisting on allowing it to run its course
> unhindered by medical assistance while meticulously documenting its
> progress and the genealogical relations of those who perished and those
> who survived) and his own obdurate silence, until his death in February,
> as to why he carried out the vaccination program in the first place, and
> above all with the lethally dangerous vaccine.
> 
>         The same conclusion is reinforced by considering the objectives of
> the anthropological research carried out by Chagnon under Neel's initial
> direction and continued support. Chagnon's work has been consistently
> directed toward portraying Yanomami society as exactly the kind of
> originary human society envisioned by Neel, with dominant males (the most
> frequent killers) having the most wives or sexual partners and offspring.
> If this pristine, eugenically optimal society could be shown to survive a
> contact epidemic with its structure of dominant male polygynists
> essentially intact, regardless of quantitatively serious population
> losses, Neel might plausibly be able to argue that his eugenic social
> vision was vindicated. If the epidemic was indeed produced as an
> experiment, either wholly or in part, the genetic studies on the
> correlation of blood group samples and genealogies carried out by Chagnon
> and some of his students thus formed integral parts of this massive, and
> massively fatal, human experiment.
> 
>         As another reader of Tierney's ms commented, Mr. Tierney's
> analysis is a case study of the dangers in science of the uncontrolled
> ego, of lack of respect for life, and of greed and self-indulgence. It is
> a further extraordinary revelation of malicious and perverted work
> conducted under the aegis of the Atomic Energy Commission.
> 
>         Tierney's revelations begin, but do not end, with the 1968
> epidemic. There are many more episodes and sub-plots, almost equally
> awful, to his narrative of the antics of anthropologists among the
> Yanomami. Enough has been said by this time, however, for you to see that
> the Association is going to have to make some collective response to this
> book, both to the facts it documents and the probable conclusions it
> implies. There will be a storm in the media, and another in the general
> scholarly community, and no doubt several within anthropology itself. We
> must be ready. Tierney devotes much of the book to a critique of Napoleon
> Chagnon's work (and actions). He makes clear Chagnon has faithfully
> striven, in his ethnographic and theoretical accounts of the Yanomami, to
> represent them as conforming to Neel's ideas about the Hobbesian savagery
> of "natural" human societies , and how this constitutes the natural
> selective context for the rise to social dominance and reproductive
> advantage of males with the gene for "leadership" or "innate ability"
> (thus Chagnon's emphasis on Yanomami "fierceness" and propensity for
> chronic warfare, and the supposed statistical tendency for men who kill
> more enemies to have more female sexual/reproductive partners). He
> documents how all these aspects of Chagnon's account of the Yanomami are
> based on false, non-existent or misinterpreted data. In other words,
> Chagnon's main claims about Yanomami society, the ones that have been so
> much heralded by sociobiologists and other partisans of his work, namely
> that men who kill more reproduce more and have more female partners, and
> that such men become the dominant leaders of their communities, are simply
> not true. Thirdly and most troublingly, he reports that Chagnon has not
> stopped with cooking and re-cooking his data on conflict but has actually
> attempted to manufacture the phenomenon itself, actually fomenting
> conflicts between Yanomami communities, not once but repeatedly.
> 
>         In his film work with Asch, for example, Chagnon induced Yanomami
> to enact fights and aggressive behavior for Asch's camera, sometimes
> building whole artificial villages as "sets" for the purpose, which were
> presented as spontaneous slices of Yanomami life unaffected by the
> presence of the anthropologists. Some of these unavowedly artificial
> scenarios, however, actually turned into real conflicts, partly as a
> result of Chagnon's policy of giving vast amounts of presents to the
> villages that agreed to put on the docu-drama, which distorted their
> relations with their neighbors in ways that encouraged outbreaks of
> raiding. In sum, most of the Yanomami conflicts that Chagnon documents,
> that are the basis of his interpretation of Yanomami society as a
> neo-Hobbesian system of endemic warfare, were caused directly or
> indirectly by himself: a fact he invariably neglects to report. This is
> not just a matter of bad ethnography or unreflexive theorizing: Yanomami
> were maimed and killed in these conflicts, and whole communities were
> disrupted to the point of fission and flight.(Brian Ferguson has also
> documented some of this story, but Tierney adds much new evidence). As a
> general point, it is clear that Chagnon's whole Yanomami oeuvre is more
> radically continuous with Neel's eugenic theories, and his unethical
> approach to experimentation on human subjects, than appears simply from a
> reading of Chagnon's works by themselves.
> 
>         Chagnon is not the only anthropologist mentioned in Tierney's
> narrative. Some of his students, like Hames and Good, are also dealt with
> (not so unfavorably). The French anthropologist, Jaques Lizot, also gets a
> chapter. He has had nothing to do with Neel or Chagnon (in fact has been a
> trenchant and cogent critic of their work), but he has an Achilles heel of
> his own in the form of a harem of Yanomami boys that he keeps, and showers
> with presents in exchange for sexual favors (he has also been known to
> resort to young girls when boys were unavailable). On the sexual front,
> there are also passing references to Chagnon himself demanding that
> villagers bring him girls for sex.
> 
>         There is still more, in the form of collusion by Neel and Chagnon
> with sinister Venezuelan politicians attempting to gain control of
> Yanomami lands for illegal gold mining concessions, with the
> anthropologists providing "cover" for the illegal mine developer as a
> "naturalist" collaborating with the anthropological researchers, in
> exchange for the politician's guaranteeing continuing access to the
> Indians for the anthropologists.
> 
>         This nightmarish story -a real anthropological heart of darkness
> beyond the imagining of even a Josef Conrad (though not, perhaps, a Josef
> Mengele)--will be seen (rightly in our view) by the public, as well as
> most anthropologists, as putting the whole discipline on trial. As another
> reader of the galleys put it, This book should shake anthropology to its
> very foundations. It should cause the field to understand how the corrupt
> and depraved protagonists could have spread their poison for so long while
> they were accorded great respect throughout the Western World and
> generations of undergraduates received their lies as the introductory
> substance of anthropology. This should never be allowed to happen again.
> 
>         We venture to predict that this reaction is fairly representative
> of the response that will follow the publication of Tierney's book and the
> New Yorker excerpt. Coming as they will less than two months before the
> San Francisco meetings, these publication events virtually guarantee that
> the Yanomami scandal will be at its height at the Meetings. This should
> give an optimal opportunity for the Association to mobilize the membership
> and the institutional structure to deal with it. The writers, both
> emeritus members of the Committee for Human Rights, have arranged with
> Barbara Johnston, the present chair of the CfHR, that the open Forum put
> on by the Committee this year be devoted to the Yanomami case. This seemed
> the best way to provide a venue for a public airing of the scandal, given
> that the program is of course already closed. With Johnston's consent, we
> have invited Patrick Tierney to come to the Meetings and be present at the
> Forum. He has accepted. He has also agreed to have a copy of the book ms
> sent to Johnston, for the use of the CfHR. We have also tentatively agreed
> with Barbara that the CfHR should draft a press release, which the
> President (either or both of you) could (if you and the Executive Board
> approve) circulate to the media. There are obviously human rights aspects
> of this case that make the CfHR appropriate, but the Ethics Committee, the
> Society for Latin American Anthropology, and the Association for Latina
> and Latino Anthropology should also be notified and involved, separately
> or jointly. These obviously do not exhaust the possibilities--- a lot of
> thought and planning remains to be done. Our point is simply that the time
> to start is now.
> 
> -------------- End Forwarded Message --------------
>