Darkness in El Dorado Controversy - Archived Document


Internet Source: Slate.msn.com, Oct. 24, 2000
Source URL (Archive.org): http://slate.msn.com/HeyWait/00-10-24/SideB03.asp

Hey Wait a Minute, Side Bar 3

By John Tooby

One paper that prominently notes that no contagious transmission of a live-virus measles vaccine has ever been recorded is "Measles Vaccine," by L.E. Markowitz and S.L. Katz, in Vaccines, edited by S.A. Plotkin and E.A. Mortimer, and published by Harcourt Brace. Tierney cites this paper five times in making his argument that the vaccine was the source of the epidemic, without once mentioning this particular part of it.

Neel's views on eugenics are from his 1994 book Physician to the Gene Pool, published by John Wiley and Sons. Tierney cites this book's title as evidence that Neel is a eugenicist, failing to mention all the evidence to the contrary in the book itself. What the title in fact refers to is that Neel was a founder of the field of medical genetics. For example, he is the scientist who discovered that the gene that causes sickle-cell anemia was preserved by natural selection because it conferred resistance to malaria.

The Chagnon quotes on violence and human nature are from his book Yanomano, 5th Edition and were placed under the heading "general comments on Yanomamo violence" to prevent anyone but investigative reporters from having trouble finding his thoughts on the matter.

The Elsa Redmond quote comes from her book Tribal and Chiefly Warfare in South America, published by the University of Michigan, Memoir of the Museum of Anthropology 28.

The John Peters quote comes from Life Among the Yanomami: The Story of Change Among the Xilixana on the Mucajai River in Brazil, published by Broadview Press.

The quote from Lou Marano comes from his dispatches on the controversy for UPI.