I always thought it would be delicious to eat human meat. I imagine it would taste like chicken, which I like. But now it turns out there is a terrible disease you can get if you are a cannibal! How is this fair?!?
It is called Kuru. It is basically like mad cow disease, but instead it’s mad human disease! Mad cow disease happens when cows are put in the feed of other cows and Kuru happens when people eat people. Both are very closely related and are passed on by proteins called prions.
Symptoms for both, aside from a brain that looks like swiss cheese, include drooling, random outbursts of laughing, shaking, slurred speech and generally looking like a moron.
It used to occur very frequently in Papua New Guinea where cannibalism was very popular. On the other hand, there have been very few medical studies regarding the health effects of headhunting and headshrinking, which were the other popular hobbies in that region.
This also throws into question if the cannibalistic brain eating ape theories promoted by Devo are correct in all respects because they believe cannibalism promotes mental development when in fact it seems like cannibalism might actually promote mental degeneracy.
Still, if I was in New Guinea and there were a bunch of shaking, laughing, drooling, frothing morons asking me to join them, I might be game.
Tags: cannibalism, devo, drooling like a moron, kuru, mad cow disease, mad human disease
April 24, 2008 at 8:22 pm
[...] Chickennights is wassup « Kuru & Koro Part One. Kuru : The Mad Human Disease!!! [...]
October 11, 2008 at 1:40 pm
A quick FYI. Kuru is a prion disease similar Bovine Spongiform Encelphalapy AKA BSE AKA “mad cow disease.” Kuru is spread by eating the brains of affected animals. In the case of the Fore’ tribe in New Guinea, women sampled the brains of their loved ones during funerary rites.
Prions are virtually indestructible even by cooking, but all is not lost! If you eat nothing but the meat, the muscle, you should be able to consume your enemies with no ill effects.