The following message was passed to me by a colleague. I thought it would
be of interest here. Its kinda long, so delete if you get bored.
mike
---->---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> >> To: Louise Lamphere, President, American Anthropological Association >> (lamphere who-is-at un> >> Don Brenneis, President -elect, American Anthropological Association >> (brenneis@cats.ucsc.edu) >> >> From: Terry Turner, Professor of Anthropology, Cornell >> University. Head of >> the Special Commission of the American Anthropological Association to >> Investigate the Situation of the Brazilian Yanomami, 1990-91 >> (tst3@cornell.edu >> >> Leslie Sponsel, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii, >> Manoa. Chair of the AAA Committee for Human Rights 1992-1996 >> (sponsel@hawaii.edu) >> >> In re: Scandal about to be caused by publication of book by Patrick >> Tierney (Darkness in El Dorado. New York. Norton. Publication date: >> October 1, 2000). >> >> Madam President, Mr. President-elect: >> >> We write to inform you of an impending scandal that will affect the >> American Anthropological profession as a whole in the eyes of the public,
>> and arouse intense indignation and calls for action among members of the >> Association. In its scale, ramifications, and sheer criminality and >> corruption it is unparalleled in the history of Anthropology. The AAA will >> be called upon by the general media and its own membership to take >> collective stands on the issues it raises, as well as appropriate >> redressive actions. All of this will obviously involve you as >> Presidents of >> the Association-so the sooner you know about the story that is about to >> break, the better prepared you can be to deal with it. Both of us have >> seen >> galley copies of a book by Patrick Tierney, an investigative journalist, >> about the actions of anthropologists and associated scientific researchers >> (notably geneticists and medical experimenters) among the Yanomami of >> Venezuela over the past thirty-five years. Because of the sensational >> nature of its revelations, the notoriety of the people it exposes, and the >> prestige of the organs of the academic establishment it implicates, the >> book is bound to be widely read both outside and inside the >> profession. As >> both an indication and a vector of its public impact, we have learned that >> The New Yorker magazine is planning to publish an extensive excerpt, timed >> to coincide with the publication of the book (on or about October 1st). >> >> The focus of the scandal is the long-term project for study of the >> Yanomami >> of Venezuela organized by James Neel, the human geneticist, in which >> Napoleon Chagnon, Timothy Asch, and numerous other anthropologists took >> part. The French anthropologist Jacques Lizot, who also works with the >> Yanomami but is not part of Neel-Chagnon project, also figures in a >> different scandalous capacity. >> >> One of Tierney's more startling revelations is that the whole Yanomami >> project was an outgrowth and continuation of the Atomic Energy Comissions
>> secret program of experiments on human subjects James Neel, the >> originator >> and director of the project, was part of the medical and genetic research
>> team attached to the Atomic Energy Commission since the days of the >> Manhattan Project. He was a member of the small group of researchers >> responsible for studying the effects of radiation on human subjects. He >> personally headed the team that investigated the effects of the Hiroshima
>> and Nagasaki bombs on survivors,. He was put in charge of the study of the >> effects of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and later was involved
>> in the studies of the effects of the radioactivity from the experimental A >> and H bomb blasts in the Marshall Islands on the natives (our >> colleague May >> Jo Marshall has a lot to say about these studies in the Marshalls and >> Neel's role in them). The same group also secretly carried out experiments >> on human subjects in the USA. These included injecting people with >> radioactive plutonium without their knowledge or permission,in some cases
>> leading to their death or disfigurement ( Neel himself appears not to have >> given any of these experimental injections). Another member of the >> same AEC >> group of human geneticists and medical experimenters, a Venezuelan, Marcel >> Roche, was a close colleague of Neel's and spent some time at his >> AEC-funded center for Human Genetics at Ann Arbor. He returned to >> Venezuela >> after the war and did a study of the Yanomami that involved administering
>> doses of a radioactive isotope of iodine and analyzing samples of >> blood for >> genetic data. Roche and his project were apparently the connection >> that led >> Neel to choose the Yanomami for his big study of the genetics of >> "leadership" and differential rates of reproduction among dominant and >> sub-dominant males in a genetically "isolated" human population. There is
>> thus a genealogical connection between the the human experiments carried >> out by the AEC, and Neel's and Chagnon's Yanomami project, which was from
>> the outset funded by the AEC. >> >> Tierney presents convincing evidence that Neel and Chagnon, on their trip
>> to the Yanomami in 1968, greatly exacerbated, and probably started, the >> epidemic of measles that killed "hundreds, perhaps thousands" (Tierney's >> language-the exact figure will never be known) of Yanomami. The epidemic >> appears to have been caused, or at least worsened and more widely spread,
>> by a campaign of vaccination carried out by the research team, which used
>> a virulent vaccine (Edmonson B) that had been counter-indicated by medical >> experts for use on isolated populations with no prior exposure to measles
>> (exactly the Yanomami situation). Even among populations with prior >> contact >> and consequent partial genetic immunity to measles, the vaccine was >> supposed to be used only with supportive injections of gamma globulin. >> >> It was known to produce effects virtually indistinguishable from the >> disease of measles itself. Medical experts, when informed that Neel and >> his group used the vaccine in question on the Yanomami, typically >> refuse to >> believe it at first, then say that it is incredible that they could have >> done it, and are at a loss to explain why they would have chosen such an >> inappropriate and dangerous vaccine. There is no record that Neel sought >> any medical advice before applying the vaccine. He never informed the >> appropriate organs of the Venezuelan government that his group was >> planning >> to carry out a vaccination campaign, as he was legally required to do. >> Neither he nor any other member of the expedition, including Chagnon and >> the other anthropologists, has ever explained why that vaccine was used, >> despite the evidence that it actually caused or at a minimum greatly >> exacerbated the fatal epidemic. >> >> Once the measles epidemic took off, closely following the vaccinations >> with >> Edmonson B, the members of the research team refused to provide any >> medical >> assistance to the sick and dying Yanomami, on explicit orders from >> Neel. He >> insisted to his colleagues that they were only there to observe and record >> the epidemic, and that they must stick strictly to their roles as >> scientists, not provide medical help. >> >> All this is bad enough, but the probable truth that emerges, by >> implication, from Tierney's documentation is more chilling. There was, it
>> turns out, a compelling theoretical motive for Neel to want to observe an
>> epidemic of measles, or comparable "contact" disease, or at least an >> outbreak virtually indistinguishable from the real thing-precisely the >> effect that the vaccine he chose was known to cause-and to produce one for >> this purpose if necessary. This motive emerges from Teirney's >> documentation >> of Neel's extreme eugenic theories and his documented statements about >> what >> he was hoping to find among the Yanomami, interpreted against the >> background of his long association with the Atomic Energy Commission's >> secret experiments on human subjects. Neel believed that "natural" human >> society (as it existed everywhere before the advent of large-scale a >> gricultural societies and contemporary states with their vast populations) >> consisted of small, genetically isolated groups, in which, according >> to his >> eugenically slanted genetic theories, dominant genes (specifically, a gene >> he believed existed for "leadership" or "innate ability") would have a >> selective advantage, because male carriers of this gene could gain >> access >> to a disproportionate share of the available females, thus reproducing >> their own superior genes more frequently than less "innately able" males.
>> The result, supposedly, would be the continual upgrading of the human >> genetic stock. Modern mass societies, by contrast, consist of vast >> genetically entropic "herds" in which, he theorized, recessive genes could >> not be eliminated by selective competition and superior leadership genes >> would be swamped by mass genetic mediocrity. The political implication of
>> this fascistic eugenics is clearly that society should be reorganized into >> small breeding isolates in which genetically superior males could emerge >> into dominance, eliminating or subordinating the male losers in the >> competition for leadership and women, and amassing harems of brood >> females. >> >> A big problem for this program, however, was the tendency, generally >> recognized by virtually all qualified population geneticists and >> epidemiologists, for small breeding isolates to lack genetic >> resistance to >> diseases incubated in other groups, and their consequent vulnerability to
>> contact epidemics. For Neel, this meant that the emergence of genetically
>> superior males in small breeding isolates would tend to be undercut and >> neutralized by epidemic diseases to which they would be genetically >> vulnerable, while the supposedly genetically entropic mass societies of >> modern democratic states, the antitheses of Neel's ideal >> alpha-male-dominated groups, would be better adapted for developing >> genetic >> immunity to such "contact" diseases. It is known that Neel, virtually >> alone >> among contemporary geneticists, rejected the genetic (and historical) >> evidence for the vulnerability of genetically isolated groups to diseases
>> introduced through contact from other populations. It is possible that he
>> thought that genetically superior members of such groups might prove to >> have differential levels of immunity and thus higher rates of survival to
>> imported diseases. In such a case, such exogenous epidemics, despite the >> enormous losses of general population they inflict, might actually be >> shown >> to increase the relative proportion of genetically superior individuals to >> the total population, and thus be consistent with Neel's eugenic program.
>> However this may have been, Tierney's well-documented account, in its >> entirety, strongly supports the conclusion that the epidemic was in all >> probabilty deliberately caused as an experiment designed to produce >> scientific support for Neel's eugenic theory. This remains only an >> inference in the present state of our knowledge: there is no "smoking gun" >> in the form of a written text or recorded speech by Neel. It is >> nevertheless the only explanation that makes sense of a number of >> otherwise >> inexplicable facts, including Neel's known interest in observing an >> epidemic in a small isolated group for which detailed records of genetic >> and genealogical relations were available, his otherwise inexplicable >> selection of a virulent vaccine known to produce effects virtually >> identical with the disease itself, his behavior once the epidemic had >> started (insisting on allowing it to run its course unhindered by medical
>> assistance while meticulously documenting its progress and the >> genealogical >> relations of those who perished and those who survived) and his own >> obdurate silence, until his death in February, as to why he carried >> out the >> vaccination program in the first place, and above all with the lethally >> dangerous vaccine. >> >> The same conclusion is reinforced by considering the objectives of the >> anthropological research carried out by Chagnon under Neel's initial >> direction and continued support. Chagnon's work has been consistently >> directed toward portraying Yanomami society as exactly the kind of >> originary human society envisioned by Neel, with dominant males (the most
>> frequent killers) having the most wives or sexual partners and offspring.
>> If this pristine, eugenically optimal society could be shown to survive a
>> contact epidemic with its structure of dominant male polygynists >> essentially intact, regardless of quantitatively serious population >> losses, >> Neel might plausibly be able to argue that his eugenic social vision was >> vindicated. If the epidemic was indeed produced as an experiment, either >> wholly or in part, the genetic studies on the correlation of blood group >> samples and genealogies carried out by Chagnon and some of his students >> thus formed integral parts of this massive, and massively fatal, human >> experiment. >> >> As another reader of Tierney's ms commented, Mr. Tierney's analysis is a >> case study of the dangers in science of the uncontrolled ego, of lack of >> respect for life, and of greed and self-indulgence. It is a further >> extraordinary revelation of malicious and perverted work conducted under >> the aegis of the Atomic Energy Commission. >> >> Tierney's revelations begin, but do not end, with the 1968 epidemic. There >> are many more episodes and sub-plots, almost equally awful, to his >> narrative of the antics of anthropologists among the Yanomami. Enough has
>> been said by this time, however, for you to see that the Association is >> going to have to make some collective response to this book, both to the >> facts it documents and the probable conclusions it implies.There will be a >> storm in the media, and another in the general scholarly community, >> and no >> doubt several within anthropology itself. We must be ready. Tierney >> devotes much of the book to a critique of Napoleon Chagnon's work (and >> actions). He makes clear Chagnon has faithfully striven, in his >> ethnographic and theoretical accounts of the Yanomami, to represent >> them as >> conforming to Neel's ideas about the Hobbesian savagery of "natural" human >> societies , and how this constitutes the natural selective context for the >> rise to social dominance and reproductive advantage of males with the gene >> for "leadership" or "innate ability" (thus Chagnon's emphasis on Yanomami
>> "fierceness" and propensity for chronic warfare, and the supposed >> statistical tendency for men who kill more enemies to have more female >> sexual/reproductive partners). He documents how all these aspects of >> Chagnon's account of the Yanomami are based on false, non-existent or >> misinterpreted data. In other words, Chagnon's main claims about Yanomami
>> society, the ones that have been so much heralded by sociobiologists and >> other partisans of his work, namely that men who kill more reproduce more
>> and have more female partners, and that such men become the dominant >> leaders of their communities, are simply not true. Thirdly and most >> troublingly, he reports that Chagnon has not stopped with cooking and >> re-cooking his data on conflict but has actually attempted to manufacture
>> the phenomenon itself, actually fomenting conflicts between Yanomami >> communities, not once but repeatedly. >> >> In his film work with Asch, for example, Chagnon induced Yanomami to enact >> fights and aggressive behavior for Asch's camera, sometimes building whole >> artificial villages as "sets" for the purpose, which were presented as >> spontaneous slices of Yanomami life unaffected by the presence of the >> anthropologists. Some of these unavowedly artificial scenarios, however, >> actually turned into real conflicts, partly as a result of Chagnon's >> policy of giving vast amounts of presents to the villages that agreed to >> put on the docu-drama, which distorted their relations with their >> neighbors >> in ways that encouraged outbreaks of raiding. In sum, most of the Yanomami >> conflicts that Chagnon documents, that are the basis of his interpretation >> of Yanomami society as a neo-Hobbesian system of endemic warfare, were >> caused directly or indirectly by himself: a fact he invariably neglects to >> report. This is not just a matter of bad ethnography or unreflexive >> theorizing: Yanomami were maimed and killed in these conflicts, and whole
>> communities were disrupted to the point of fission and flight.(Brian >> Ferguson has also documented some of this story, but Tierney adds much new >> evidence). As a general point, it is clear that Chagnon's whole Yanomami >> oeuvre is more radically continuous with Neel's eugenic theories, and his
>> unethical approach to experimentation on human subjects, than appears >> simply from a reading of Chagnon's works by themselves. >> >> Chagnon is not the only anthropologist mentioned in Tierney's narrative. >> Some of his students, like Hames and Good, are also dealt with (not so >> unfavorably). The F French anthropologist, Jaques Lizot, also gets a >> chapter. He has had nothing to do with Neel or Chagnon (in fact has been a >> trenchant and cogent critic of their work), but he has an Achilles heel of >> his own in the form of a harem of Yanomami boys that he keeps, and showers >> with presents in exchange for sexual favors (he has also been known to >> resort to young girls when boys were unavailable). On the sexual front, >> there are also passing references to Chagnon himself demanding that >> villagers bring him girls for sex. >> >> There is still more, in the form of collusion by Neel and Chagnon with >> sinister Venezuelan politicians attempting to gain control of Yanomami >> lands for illegal gold mining concessions, with the anthropologists >> providing "cover" for the illegal mine developer as a "naturalist" >> collaborating with the anthropological researchers, in exchange for the >> politician's guaranteeing continuing access to the Indians for the >> anthropologists. >> >> This nightmarish story -a real anthropological heart of darkness beyond >> the imagining of even a Josef Conrad (though not, perhaps, a Josef >> Mengele)--will be seen (rightly in our view) by the public, as well as >> most >> anthropologists, as putting the whole discipline on trial. As another >> reader of the galleys put it, This book should shake anthropology to its >> very foundations. It should cause the field to understand how the corrupt
>> and depraved protagonists could have spread their poison for so >> long while they were accorded great respect throughout the Western World >> and generations of undergraduates received their lies as the introductory
>> substance of anthropology. This should never be allowed to happen again. >> >> We venture to predict that this reaction is fairly representative of the >> response that will follow the publication of Tierney's book and the New >> Yorker excerpt. Coming as they will less than two months before the San >> Francisco meetings, these publication events virtually guarantee that the
>> Yanomami scandal will be at its height at the Meetings. This should >> give an >> optimal opportunity for the Association to mobilize the membership and the >> institutional structure to deal with it. The writers, both emeritus >> members of the Committee for Human Rights, have arranged with Barbara >> Johnston, the present chair of the CfHR, that the open Forum put on by the >> Committee this year be devoted to the Yanomami case. This seemed the best
>> way to provide a venue for a public airing of the scandal, given that the
>> program is of course already closed. With Johnston's consent, we have >> invited Patrick Tierney to come to the Meetings and be present at the >> Forum. He has accepted. He has also agreed to have a copy of the book ms >> sent to Johnston, for the use of the CfHR. We have also >> tentatively agreed >> with Barbara that the CfHR should draft a press release, which the >> President (either or both of you) could (if you and the Executive Board >> approve) circulate to the media. There are obviously human rights aspects
>> of this case that make the CfHR appropriate, but the Ethics Committee, the >> Society for Latin American Anthropology, and the Association for Latina >> and Latino Anthropology should also be notified and involved, >> separately or >> jointly. These obviously do not exhaust the possibilities--- a lot of >> thought and planning remains to be done. Our point is simply that the time >> to start is now. >> >> >> >> >> Rosemary Gianno, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Sociology/Anthropology >> Rhodes >> Hall Keene State College Keene NH 03435-3400 USA >> >> rgianno@keene.edu Phone: (603) 358-2510 Fax: (603) 358-2184 >> >> >> George Aaron Broadwell, g.broadwell@albany.edu >> Anthropology; Linguistics and Cognitive Science, >> University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, NY 12222 | 518-442-4711 >> Web page: <http://www.albany.edu/anthro/fac/broadwell.htm> http://www.albany.edu/anthro/fac/broadwell.htm >> - >> >>**************************************************************************
>> >> JAY RUBY >>911 Pleasant Street, No. 3W, Oak Park, IL 60302 >>voice - 708-445-8964 fax - 204-209-7764 >> >>**************************************************************************
>>My Web page is <http://www.temple.edu/anthro/ruby/jayruby.html> http://www.temple.edu/anthro/ruby/jayruby.html >> >>Link to my new book, Picturing Culture - >> <http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/13964.ctl> http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/13964.ctl >> >>Link to a description of my ethnographic study of Oak Park, IL - >> <http://astro.ocis.temple.edu/~ruby/opp> http://astro.ocis.temple.edu/~ruby/opp >> >>**************************************************************************
>>"I think when you are really stuck, when you have stood still in the same >>spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were >>standing in, and jump, and pray." Renata Adler in Speed Boat. >> >************************************************************ >Jon Wagner >Division of Education, UC Davis > >Office: 2397 Academic Surge, UC Davis >E-mail: jcwagner@ucdavis.edu >PH1: 530-752-5387 >PH2: 510-559-8006 >FAX: 530-752-5411 >Mail: Division of Education, UC Davis, 1 Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616 > >************************************************************ >
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