Kuru: The Science and the Sorcery

This fascinating film is a medical detective story, which looks at the story of Kuru (also known as ‘laughing sickness’) a degenerative neurological disorder found predominately in Papua New Guinea’s Fore people. Kuru: The Science and the Sorcery follows Australian scientist and the world’s leading authority on the disease, Michael Alpers as he retraces his groundbreaking 1962 pioneering research trip deep into the jungles of Papua New Guinea. The documentary takes its audience into a mysterious world of sorcery, cannibalism and tribal conflict. Stranger than fiction, research into Kuru revealed a chain of discoveries, which turned scientific understandings upside down and resulted in two Nobel prizes. This film is an anthropological study not to be overlooked.