Dan Budin's List: Darkness

• Meeting of the American Anthropological Association Executive Board the following motion was passed.

  • This report discusses the unethical practices that took place on the Yanomami natives during James Neel stay there in 1968. It also covers the different issues that the El Dorado Task Force had with other anthropologists who came to study the Yanomami people and how they did whatever they wanted without regard for the well being of the natives.
• The AAA Executive Board will establish a task force of five members of the American Anthropological Association, four to be appointed by the AAA President, to conduct an inquiry on the allegations contained in Darkness in El Dorado by Patrick Tierney.
• he El Dorado Task Force will consider the allegations concerning (1) fieldwork practices of anthropologists, (2) representations and portrayals of the Yanomami that may have had a negative impact, (3) efforts to create organizations to represent the interests of Yanomami or efforts to contribute to Yanomami welfare that may have actually undermined their well-being, (4) activities that may have resulted in personal gain to scientists, anthropologists and journalists while contributing harm to the Yanomami, and (5) activities by anthropologists, scientists and journalists that may have contributed to malnutrition, disease and disorganization.
• The El Dorado Task Force may wish to consider allegations relating to medical research and medical emergencies among the Yanomami
• The El Dorado Task Force should be mindful of the evolution of various codes of ethics and ethical guidelines existing during the time a particular set of actions occurred.
• That a program of vaccination of Yanomami undertaken by James Neel in 1968 caused an epidemic of measles.
• That practices of anthropologists in the field were unethical, ignoring legal constraints and ethics codes and tending, either through oversight or purposefully, to exacerbate violence, spread disease, and violate the dignity of individual Yanomami through, for instance, inappropriate sexual relations.
• That damaging representations of the Yanomami were published and repeated even after such representations were criticized as likely to cause them harm
• That anthropologists, especially Americans, and others generally ignored threats to the Yanomami and gave the highest priority to continuing established programs of research of no immediate benefit to the Yanomami.
• That anthropologists and others working with the Yanomami have not adequately addressed malnutrition, disease, and disorganization among them
• That experiments involving the injection of radioactive iodine were carried out among the Yanomami without attention to the principles of informed consent then in effect

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• Neel worked for a covert program of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to study the effects of radiation on human subjects and to see how human groups behaved under conditions of extreme stress. Neel had ubermensch notions about the genetics of “leadership” and differential rates of reproduction among dominant and sub-dominant males in a genetically “isolated” human population. The AEC was happy to pick up the tab, no doubt eager to find out how any survivor group of carefully selected Americans secluded in caves during nuclear Armageddon would survive and breed in the aftermath
• Neel 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.” It seems that the epidemic was “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 BI) that had been counter-indicated by medical experts for use on isolated populations with no prior exposure to measles (exactly the Yanomami situation).”
• Neel secretly supervised a program of potentially lethal injections. Then he instructed the members of his research team to refuse to provide any medical assistance to the sick and dying Yanomami, Neel said that as men of science they should not intervene. He apparently believed that before the rise of mass societies, first in agricultural communities and then in cities, small genetically isolated groups would produce leaders with dominant genes who would then appropriate a big share of the available women with whom they would breed, thus constantly upgrading the genetic stock of the tribe.
• He wanted to disprove the vulnerability of small, isolated groups to epidemics, seeking to show that though a disease such as measles might wreak awful havoc, his alpha-dominated males would be better adapted to evolve genetic immunity to these “contact” diseases. Many might die but the survivors would be of ever more superior stock.

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• Tierney claims that it is the anthropologists, film-makers, and journalists themselves who have not only created a false image of the Yanomami Indians based on their own pre-conceived self-serving notions, but in fact have devasted the people they are trying to study by introducing 'germs, steel, and guns'. Tierney in particular attacks noted anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon and geneticist James Neel. As the Amazon.com review states, "Tierney charges that Chagnon himself fomented wars through his tactics of creating false alliances, giving away machetes,and staging scenes in order to substantiate his own belief in male aggression. Even worse, Tierney believes that Chagnon and his mentor, the famous geneticist James Neel, actually started the measles epidemic that decimated up to 20 percent of the tribe's population by administering a contraindicated "dinosaur vaccine" to a highly vulnerable population."

• What's bringing all of this to the forefront again are two developments: an article in the Dec. 11, 2009, issue of the journal Science, and the upcoming premiere of "Secrets of the Tribe," a film by Brazilian director José Padilha. The film will debut Jan. 22 at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.
• "It is now heating up again," Chagnon said of the longstanding controversy. "People seem to love conspiracy theories that involve scandals and deceptive scientists who do harm to hapless, hopeless, homeless, and harmless native peoples who guard the Amazon Basin and preserve it for the rest of us."
• The field of anthropology goes under the magnifying glass in this fiery investigation of the seminal research on Yanomami Indians. In the 1960s and '70s, a steady stream of anthropologists filed into the Amazon Basin to observe this ‘virgin' society untouched by modern life. Thirty years later, the events surrounding this infiltration have become a scandalous tale of academic ethics and infighting."
• "One of the most important things in science is skepticism, the idea that we should not accept theories and beliefs as being true at face value," Padilha said in an interview via e-mail. "In science, we must demand beliefs and theories that are testable empirically, and we need to confront those theories with the available empirical basis in a sound methodological way before appraising them as tentatively true. I think that my film shows that in the case of the Yanomamö studies and controversies, the anthropological community did not behave this way."
• In the Science article, historian Alice Domurat Dreger of Northwestern University is quoted as saying that AAA's actions were so problematic that "I can't imagine how any scholar feels safe" as a member.
• "The more I read about the subject," Padilha said, "the more I realized that some of the fierce controversies revolving around such studies had a lot to do with academic politics and with the lack of sound methodological procedures to decide what could and could not be accepted as scientifically valid in the field of Yanomamö anthropology. Since I am very interested in epistemology and philosophy of science, and I am a strong believer that the methodology of science is the best we have to evaluate attempts to understand nature, and to generate knowledge, I agreed to make the film."

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• I am grateful that Professor Bruce Alberts, the President of the National Academy of Sciences, has taken the time to scrutinize Darkness in El Dorado , including the 1469 endnotes. He has found several minor errors, none of which deal with the central issue of the book--the treatment of the Yanomami in the Amazon. I did not write the book lightly and I do not take any mistakes lightly. I will correct them in the next printing of the book.
• The controversy has been spun in such a way as to make Darkness in El Dorado seem a book only about a measles vaccine and measles epidemics in the Amazon. In fact, the book is a work with a broad and encompassing theme, which suggests that cultural deracination has been brought about by outsiders, including scientists and journalists who have projected their own views and ideologies on the Yanomami.
• One of my theses, for those who haven't read the book yet, is that scientific expeditions to the Yanomami to collect 12,000 blood samples and genealogies, financed by the Atomic Energy Commission as part of radiation studies in human genetics between 1965 and 1972, ¹ took unethical and unfair advantage of the Yanomami. These expeditions also spread disease, warfare, and cultural chaos among one of the most vulnerable groups in the world.
• I have also documented, in painful detail, how Neel's team, despite being in the middle of a major outbreak of measles in a virgin population, continued to collect blood, stage films and distribute massive amounts of steel presents that attracted sick Yanomami who trailed the expedition into the tribe's heartland. I wish that Professor Alberts had discussed this issue, which is central to the measles chapter. Thus, the scientists seem to have been a primary vector of infection.
• What I do contend is that when one approaches a vulnerable group like the Yanomami one needs to take precautions. Noeli Pocaterra, the head of the Venezuelan Congress's Permanent Committee on Indigenous Affairs, told the press in San Francisco on November 16 that she has observed that Amerindians have more severe reactions to vaccinations than other groups. "Doctors need to listen to this," she said.
• According to President Alberts, ". . . .any contention that James Neel held eugenic principles is flatly and demonstrably wrong . . ." Yet the title of Neel's autobiography, Physician to the Gene Pool , suggests eugenic concern--that there is something wrong with the gene pool that must be remedied. Indeed, Neel has chapters entitled "Genetic Medicine for the Populations" and "Genetic Medicine for Individuals." In various parts of his autobiography, and elsewhere, he lays out broad eugenic concerns: which include both fostering positive qualities in the gene pool and removing negative ones. For example:
• One of the most frequent Japanese complaints has been that we (the ABCC) only examined them (like guinea pigs) but did not offer treatment in the event of findings of medical significance. The fact is that the terms under which the ABCC operated did not permit treatment . . . but any finding, whether on a child or on an adult, was not only explained carefully to the patient (or parents) with the recommendation to see his/her physician, but also the patient's personal physician received a detailed letter describing the findings. ¹⁶
   
    I did not include Neel's claim that all people who were studied by the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission were referred to their own physicians for treatment for two reasons. The most important one was simply the context of the quote. I explained that Napoleon Chagnon's account of the ABCC--"a medical-genetics group whose responsibility was to treat the survivors of the nuclear bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki"--was mistaken. ¹⁷ According to Neel, and Alberts, they were not permitted to treat anyone. But the notion that victims of the bombs, who were also beset by massive epidemics and a terrible shortage of medical care, could easily or simply find their "personal physicians" is doubtful, at best.

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