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:
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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
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>>> [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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