Scientists in uproar over new book

When the topic of book banning comes up, one normally thinks of graphic sex, violence, racism or the like. But the scientific community has also had its share of calls for the banning of maverick scientists’ books.

Around 1950, a group of scientists threatened to boycott the textbooks of Macmillan Co. if it went ahead with the publication of Immanuel Velikovsky’s “Worlds in Collision.” A few years later, in 1956, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration actually did confiscate and burn the books of Wilhelm Reich on orgone energy. In 1981, John Maddox, the editor of the prestigious British journal Nature, wrote in an editorial that Rupert Sheldrake’s book, “A New Science of Life,” was the “the best candidate for book burning” that he’d seen in years.

Now a furor has erupted over the publication of a new book, this time in the field of anthropology. According to Charles C. Mann, writing in the Jan. 19 issue of Science, Patrick Tierney’s “Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon” has ignited a vitriolic controversy that threatens to split the anthropology community.

Tierney’s primary target is Napoleon Chagnon, an ethnographer at the University of California at Santa Barbara, who began studying the Yanomamo Indians in 1964. The Yanomamo live along the banks of the Orinoco River on the border between Brazil and Venezuela and were at the time considered to be largely untouched by civilization, making them a gold mine for anthropological study.

In 1968, Chagnon published a book titled “Yanomamo: The Fierce People,” in which he described the natives as “brutal, cruel, and treacherous people.” Later he argued that the Yanomamo were by nature killers, for that gave them greater reproductive success.

Tierney refutes this claim in his book and says Chagnon’s widely publicized assertions may have been used to justify massacres of the natives by gold miners entering the region in the late 1980s. Even if true, Tierney has leveled more serious charges against Chagnon and others working with the peoples many say were among the last to be touched by civilization.

The Yanomamos’ culture not only was affected by researchers, says Tierney, but their interference actually led to war. They induced the natives to give blood for genetic studies, to reveal their names (thought to have magical properties), and to divulge details about their family and village life, by giving them steel goods, usually axes, machetes and shotguns. These gave the owners a huge advantage in a Stone Age culture, and there was soon fierce competition among villages over metal items.

In at least one instance, a village supplied by Chagnon went to war with another being studied by a French anthropologist named Jacques Lizot. Ten people died, and one village was burned to the ground, in what Tierney says became a common occurrence, as the villagers aligned themselves with one or the other of the anthropologists bringing them the “benefits of civilization.”

The Yanomamo had virtually no exposure to measles and thus no antibodies to the disease. It was impossible to find societies outside the Amazon whose adults lacked measles antibodies. Chagnon and James Neel, a geneticist from the University of Michigan, decided to inoculate some of the natives with measles vaccine to study antibody buildup and the differences between inherited and acquired immunity. In 1968, Neel inoculated 1,000 people with Edmonston B vaccine, an antiquated serum that had been replaced with a newer Schwartz vaccine. Tierney says that the older vaccine was used because Neel got it free.

Whatever the case, measles started to spread like wildfire through the villages and hundreds died, virtually wiping out some villages. Neel denied the vaccine caused the disease and pointed to evidence that the young daughter of a missionary may have been the carrier, but the disastrous program gave added fuel to growing numbers of critics who charge Chagnon, Lizot, and others with callous mistreatment of the Indians.

When colleagues and friends of Chagnon learned of Tierney’s book, which was 11 years in the research and writing, they tried to derail it before publication. E-mails were sent to anthropologists around the world warning of the “potentially dangerous” impact to their field and to immunization programs in the Third World. Pressure was put on the media not to report on the book or interview Tierney. John Tooby, a colleague of Chagnon’s at UCSB, set up a “war room” to lead the attack against Tierney.

It was partially successful, as the science writer of a major daily said, “I can’t believe the pressure they put on me,” and Tooby said he was able to kill a story in The Washington Post. But London’s The Guardian headlined “Scientist killed Amazon Indians to test race theory” and many others gave Tierney wide publicity. Furious anthropologists vow a complete investigation of Tierney’s charges and one predicted that “Tierney’s pretentious and defamatory contribution would soon be discredited.”

Clair Wood taught chemistry and physics for more than 10 years at Eastern Maine Technical College in Bangor.