User:SabrinaG/sandbox

Prior to prions, the Fore people initially believed the causes of kuru to be sorcery or witchcraft. Meanwhile, patrol officers believed that kuru could be psychosomatic, or caused by a mental factor. The fore people believed that kuru was caused by witches, but the reasoning behind it and the witches who were causing it could not be explained. They also thought that the magic causing kuru was contagious. Another theory for what was causing kuru was cassowary disease, also called negi negi. This disease, the Fore people believed was caused by ghosts because of the shaking and strange behavior that comes with kuru. To attempt to cure this, they would feed victims pork and casuarinas bark. Prior to the late 1950s, patrol officers thought that kuru was psychosomatic and was caused by the trauma of western colonization and perpetuated by beliefs in sorcery and witchcraft. It was not until 1957 that cannibalism was investigated with data, by Gajdusek, to be the cause of kuru. However, it was not considered a priority because it was thought to be too strange or evidence that theorized cannibalism as a cause lacked proper evidence. Cannibalism, however, was a reasonable enough explanation for kuru that the Australian administration banned the practice of feasting on the dead, until it was nearly obsolete by 1960. As the number of cases of kuru decreased, those in medical research were able to properly investigate kuru, which then led to the modern proposition of prions being the cause of kuru.