The Genius and the Boys

200989m6.0 (2)
TV MovieDocumentary

D Carleton Gajdusek won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of Prions - the particles that would emerge as the cause of Mad Cow disease - while working with a cannibal tribe on New Guinea. He was a star of the scientific world. Over his years working amongst the tribes of the South Seas, he adopted 57 kids, bringing them to a new life in Washington DC. His adoptions were hailed as wonderful fatherly beneficence. But, at the height of his career, rumours began to spread he was a paedophile. Gajdusek would argue that if sex with children was okay in their own cultures, he wasn't wrong to join in. How could a great mind like Gajdusek's lose insight so totally, and why would the scientific community to which he was a hero be so quick to leap to his defence and dismiss the allegations? (Storyville)

Crew

Bosse Lindquist

Bosse Lindquist

Director

JK

Jonas Kellagher

Producer

Bosse Lindquist

Bosse Lindquist

Writer

Cast

Bosse Lindquist

Bosse Lindquist

Narrator

MA

Michael Alpers

Himself - Professor of Medicine - Expert on Kuru

WA

Warwick Anderson

Professor in Medical Anthropology

SA

Sena Anua

Medical Reporter - PNGIMR

Daniel Carleton Gajdusek

Daniel Carleton Gajdusek

Himself - Virologist - Anthropologist - Linguist - Author - etc

RG

Robert Gajdusek

Brother

Robert Gallo

Robert Gallo

Himself - Director, Institute of Human Virology and Co-discoverer HIV

Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks

Himself - Professor of Neurology and Author

LM

Lovisa Mbagintao

Secretary

BB

Benoît B. Mandelbrot

Himself - Former Professor of Mathematics - Yale and Princeton (as Benoit Mandelbrot)

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