Carleton Gajdusek

Carleton Gajdusek

Daniel Carleton Gajdusek (September 9, 1923 – December 12, 2008) was an American physician and medical researcher who was the co-recipient (with Baruch S. Blumberg) of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976 for work on the transmissibility of a rare, incurable, and fatal neurodegenerative disorder known as kuru. Through years of research and experimentation, living amongst the South Fore people of New Guinea in the 1950s and 1960 where kuru was rampant, Carleton proved the kuru was transmitted by the Fore people's ritualistic consumption of the brains of deceased relatives ("funerary cannibalism"), with kuru disappearing among the South Fore within a generation after the elimination of cannibalism. Gajdusek also conducted important work on measles, polio and malaria, and discovered many previously unknown tribes and languages.

Relevance to Minor-Attraction

In 1997, Gajdusek was convicted of having oral sex with a male teenager. Reportedly, Gajdusek also stated in a recorded phone call that he was a pedophile. Bosse Lindquist’s documentary The Genius and the Boys discusses Gajdusek’s sexual attraction and contact with prepubescent boys. One (American) male speaks on camera as a self-identify victim of molestation in response to Gajdusek's alleged behavior, whilst others who claim sexual involvement with Gajdusek did not feel harmed. The documentary emphasizes the intensity of media interest in the case, noting that man/boy intergenerational sex in the form of fellatio was an accepted practice in the New Guinea South Fore community Gajdusek studied; interviewing Gajdusek himself, scientists, his personal friends, and supporters. Some details and timestamps follow:

(01:17:21):During the making of the film, seven men testified in confidentiality about Gajdusek having had sex with them when they were boys. Four say that the sex was untroubling and that they still love Gajdusek. For three of them, the sex was shaming, abusive and a violation. Many of Gajdusek’s foster children approached during the making of the film said they had no sexual contact with him. Gajdusek defends his actions at 01:05:18:

Gajdusek: I have never once taken a kid to my bed. They have come to my bed, and I know when to kick them out. If they hug me and I find them playing with my cock, I say, good on you, I play with theirs. And I’ll do it now and with great pleasure.

Interviewer: When you grow up with a culture that does not condone this, that–

Gajdusek: No culture condones it.

Interviewer: –surely it must hurt you, when you get subjected to a grown-up forcing sexuality on you.

Gajdusek: Boy, what a brainwashed person you are. With three or four hundred boys, who’ve had sex with me from 8 and 10 and 12, 100% have run into my bed, jumped in without my mentioning it, and asked for sex. I have never asked for it, I’ve never– and most of my friends, don’t you realize that I was jumping in people’s beds hoping they would take me. All boys want a lover, my god.</ref>

Gajdusek discusses his own sexual experience as a child at 01:08:28, and defends incest involving the young at 01:14:46. Gajdusek’s journal discusses his attraction (00:52:04):

Gajdusek writes: “The society in which I live denies me the right to exercise my love, even in sublimated form, if I’m honest enough to admit the force behind the sublimation.”</ref>

Gajdusek adopted and mentored many boys and at least one girl throughout his life; positive accounts of his influence in this respect are given throughout the film (00:10:45, 00:11:14, 00:32:50, 00:51:22).