Interview: Professor Bob Klitzman

Medical ethics expert Professor Bob Klitzman has wrestled with the big issues: genetic testing, doctor-patient relationships – and sorcery.

By Ruth Laugesen In Health, Science

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11th August, 2012

Mag Features

It was when he was in the Papua New Guinean Highlands studying brain-eating cannibals that Robert Klitzman began a fascinating journey into understanding the curious ways we make sense of illness. Fresh out of Princeton, Klitzman, who is these days a Columbia University professor of clinical sociomedical sciences, was there to help pin down the incubation period for kuru, a fatal brain illness similar to mad cow disease that was afflicting the stone-aged Fore tribe. Fore funeral rites included a feast at which the dead person’s brains were eaten. The practice died out in the 1960s, but new ...

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