D. Carleton Gajdusek dies at 85; Nobel Prize winner identified exotic disease, was unrepentant pedophile
Saturday, December 20, 2008 - 22:14
in Health & Medicine
Dr. D. Carleton Gajdusek, the brilliant yet deeply flawed pediatrician, virologist and anthropologist who won the 1976 Nobel Prize in medicine for his identification and description of kuru, the exotic disease of a remote tribe in New Guinea that was caused by a family of mysterious agents called prions, died Dec. 12 at the hotel where he lived in Tromso, Norway. He was 85.