And I say again .... there is *another* side to this story:
http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/chagnon.html
>>> "Eric Siegel" <[log in to unmask]> 10/06/00 10:11AM >>>
There is a long excerpt from the book in this week's New Yorker. The
section convincingly indicts chagnon and his associates with spreading a
devastating measles epidemic as part of a vaccination research program.
Eric Siegel
Director, Planning &
Program Development
New York Hall of Science
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Felicia Pickering [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2000 10:12 AM
> Subject: Re: How the anthropologists may have devastated the Amazon
>
>
> Check out this article and *especially* its associated web links
> for more on this story, including Chagnon's statement:
>
> http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/yanomami_book000929.html
>
> I have also copied the New York Times article on the same subject below:
>
> ******************************************************************
> ************************
>
> Book Seeks to Indict Anthropologists Who Studied Brazil Indians
> http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/28/science/28ANTH.html
>
> September 28, 2000
>
> 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."
>
>
>
> The New York Times on the Web
> http://www.nytimes.com
>
> /-----------------------------------------------------------------\
>
> copyright THE NEW YORK TIMES
>
> ******************************************************************
> ***********************
>
> >>> [log in to unmask] 10/04/00 07:21PM >>>
> http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2000/09/28/yanomamo/print.html
>
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