WG: New York Times 'On The Web' re: Anthropology & Yanomama

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> Von:  splain@hawaii.edu[SMTP:splain@hawaii.edu]
> Gesendet:     Dienstag, 3. Oktober 2000 10:11
> An:   Arno.Tausch@bmsg.gv.at
> Betreff:      Fwd: New York Times 'On The Web' re: Anthro
> 
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> 
> Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000 20:58:26 -1000
> From: Richard Rohde <rohde@hawaii.edu>
> To: uhanth-l@hawaii.edu
> Subject: New York Times 'On The Web' re: Anthro
> 
> September 28, 2000
>    
> http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/28/science/28ANTH.html   
>  
> Book Seeks to Indict Anthropologists Who Studied Brazil Indians
> By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD and SIMON ROMERO
>  
> A  new book about anthropologists who worked with isolated Indians in the
> Amazon Basin has set off a storm in the profession, reviving scholarly
> animosities, endangering personal reputations and, some parties say,
> threatening to undermine confidence in legitimate practices of
> anthropology.
> 
> In the book, "Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists
> Devastated the Amazon," Patrick Tierney, a journalist, presents evidence
> to show that in 1968 anthropologists, supported by the former Atomic
> Energy Commission, inoculated Yanomami Indians with a measles vaccine and
> suggests that the experiment possibly contributed to an epidemic of the
> disease.
> 
> "Hundreds, perhaps thousands" of people died in a population of little
> more than 20,000, Mr. Tierney said.
> 
> That is the most inflammatory of several cases described by Mr. Tierney as
> examples of careless and, perhaps, unethical behavior by anthropologists
> and filmmakers who visited and studied the isolated Yanomami
> Indians. Living to themselves in the Amazon Basin of southern Venezuela
> and northern Brazil and having virtually no contact with outsiders until
> the 1950's, the Yanomami have become to social scientists models of what
> primitive Stone Age cultures must have been like.
> 
> Some anthropologists who have read the book or a summary urged the
> American Anthropological Association or some other scientific body to
> start an inquiry. Others familiar with some of the points insist that they
> are unfounded or exaggerated.
> 
> The project leader was Dr. James V. Neel, a specialist in human genetics
> at the University of Michigan and a member of the National Academy of
> Sciences who died in February.
> 
> Another principal target, Dr. Napoleon A. Chagnon, a professor emeritus of
> anthropology at the University of California at Santa Barbara who was
> involved in the measles project, denied the allegations, calling them part
> of a "long vendetta against me" by some of the critics. "No Indians that
> we gave the vaccine to died," he said in an interview.
> 
> As charges and countercharges raced across the Internet and telephone
> wires, anthropologists sprung to Dr. Chagnon and Dr. Neel's defense,
> saying the implications are not credible. Medical scientists said they
> doubted that the vaccine itself could have caused a widespread outbreak of
> measles or directly caused so many deaths, even among people with little
> resistance like the Yanomami. Those scientists said it was more likely
> that carriers of the disease had introduced it to the villages about the
> same time the vaccination program was under way.
> 
> Health workers fear suspicions of unethical practices, even if proved
> untrue, will raise more obstacles to vaccination programs.
> 
> Mr. Tierney's book is to be published on Nov. 16 by W. W. Norton and is
> scheduled to be excerpted in The New Yorker next week. Galley proofs have
> been available. A spokesman said Mr. Tierney was declining all interviews
> until publication. He wrote that he researched outsiders' work among the
> Yanomami for 10 years. 
> 
> "We should not rush to judgment, especially since the book hasn't been
> published yet," the president of the anthropologists' group, Dr. Louise
> Lamphere, said in an interview. "In case violations did occur, we're going
> to have to find some way to deal with them. It's not like anthropologists
> are doctors or attorneys who can have their licenses revoked. It's much
> more complicated than that."
> 
> Dr. Barbara Johnston, head of the association's human rights committee,
> said she was organizing a discussion on the book on Nov. 16 at the
> association's annual meeting, in San Francisco. Mr. Tierney has agreed to
> participate. Dr. Chagnon said in a widely circulated e-mail message, "She
> is inviting me to a feeding frenzy in which I am the bait." 
> 
> In the book, Mr. Tierney writes that Dr. Neel's vaccine project was a
> continuation of the Atomic Energy Commission's studies on the effects of
> radiation on people, which Dr. Neel had participated in since the end of
> World War II. The commission wanted thousands of Yanomami blood samples to
> determine genetic mutation rates in a population completely uncontaminated
> by radiation. 
> 
> Dr. Neel had established an international reputation for discovering the
> genetic nature of thalassemia, a form of anemia that occurs among those of
> Greek or Italian descents, and demonstrating that sickle cell anemia is a
> protective adaptation against malaria. Both were major research insights.
> 
> But Dr. Neel also espoused controversial views. The book says he believed
> that there was a "leadership gene" and that a genetically isolated society
> like the Yanomami would be ideal to study, as presumably a result of
> dominant men's having more chances than lesser ones to reproduce and pass
> on their qualities.
> 
> Dr. David Glenn Smith, an anthropologist at the University of California
> at Davis, said: "I knew Jim Neel for nearly 30 years, and what people are
> saying about him sounds like a witch hunt. I can assure you he didn't
> think the Yanomami had a gene for `headmanship.' "
> 
> Mr. Tierney does not reach a conclusion in the book for the motive for the
> vaccine experiment. But in a long letter that traveled widely through e-
> mail and set off the uproar, two anthropologists, Dr. Terence Turner of
> Cornell University and Dr. Leslie E. Sponsel of the University of Hawaii,
> speculated that a likely motive  if the harshest contention is correct
> might have been to support Dr. Neel's theories.
> 
> "It is possible," the two scientists wrote, that Dr. Neel "thought that
> genetically superior members" of those isolated groups "might prove to
> have differential levels of immunity and, thus, higher rates of survival
> to imported diseases."
> 
> Although Dr. Turner and Dr. Sponsel said there appeared to be no text or
> recorded speech by Dr. Neel to support their idea, they noted that the
> book raised questions about why the team had never explained their use of
> the vaccine, even after earlier evidence had emerged that linked the
> inoculations to the cause or spread of the epidemic.
> 
> Mr. Tierney also reported some evidence that he said showed that the
> research team might have abandoned some victims of the epidemic without
> treatment.
> 
> "If the allegations are proven true," Dr. Turner said in an interview, "it
> will mean crimes against humanity have been committed." 
> 
> Mr. Tierney cited him and Dr. Sponsel as sources of "comments and
> encouragement" in preparing the book.
> 
> The book has other practices of anthropologists, including staging fights
> in making movies to support early characterizations of the Yanomami as
> unusually bellicose.
> 
> Dr. Chagnon said that was "totally incorrect."
> 
> Dr. Brian Ferguson, an anthropologist at Rutgers-Newark who wrote
> "Yanomami Warfare" (1995), said he thought that Mr. Tierney's book was
> "largely accurate in reporting the facts, but there are also opinions and
> interpretations, and that's where it gets much more debatable."
> 
> Mr. Tierney emphasized that the vaccine was a strong live-virus strain,
> Edmonston B. Medical scientists said the World Health Organization issued
> advisories in 1965 that it should be used with caution, accompanied by
> doses of gamma globulin. An improved vaccine was available by 1968, but it
> was not used.
> 
> A former director of the Federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta,
> Dr. William H. Foege, said: "Edmonston B was one of the first measles
> vaccines, and was strong and sometimes caused severe reactions that were
> like a light case of measles. But I would be very surprised if the vaccine
> caused a death, particularly death in numbers."
> 
> Dr. Susan Lindee, a science historian at the University of Pennsylvania
> who is researching a biography of Dr. Neel, recently examined some of his
> 1968 field notes and other papers and said she found evidence that
> contradicted some of Mr. Tierney's views. Dr. Neel, Dr. Lindee said, had
> Venezuela's approval for the vaccine program. When an epidemic was
> declared, the notes show, Dr. Neel provided medicine to the villages and
> their neighbors. "There is no evidence," she added, "that he attempted to
> discourage anyone from providing treatment." 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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