NOBEL WINNER: I AM ONE
By Mike van Houten and Chris Farrell

The following article about the imprisonment of the eminent American physician and medical researcher Daniel Carleton Gajdusek (1923-2008) was published in the New York periodical the NAMBLA Bulletin, volume 19, no. 2, October 1998, p. 11.

On February 18, 1997, Dr. Carleton Gajdusek, a prolific scientist and doctor (who received, among many other honors, the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1976) plead guilty to two counts of “perverted sexual practice” and two counts of child abuse (for giving a 16-year-old boy two blow jobs) in exchange for a one year sentence and the freedom to leave the United States after the sentence was completed. Between these two stark facts lies a fascinating story, one given a moving context by writing from the doctor’s own journals.

Gajdusek did most of his research in the Pacific islands, where he did a ground-breaking investigation into kuru, a brain disorder similar to “mad cow disease.” It afflicted the Fore people, a population of about 14,000 living in the isolated Easter highlands of Papua, New Guinea. Gajdusek, an American pediatrician interested in childhood diseases and anthropology, traveled to the region in the 1950s because he believed understanding kuru would lend insight into other diseases. He tried every therapy, waking 2,000 miles in 8 months collecting data before he made the break-though discovery that led to understanding kuru and other conditions caused by slow-acting viruses.

It is not clear whether Gajdusek was at all familiar with the culture of the people of the Pacific islands before his initial research trip to the region. But his journal entries show that he found a way of life that enthralled him. He would return many times to the islands on various research and medical projects, and he also adopted 56 children, mostly boys, from the Pacific, most of whom were educated in the United States at his expense. His success in combining his love for boys with his gifts as a doctor and researcher was extraordinary.

It is also unclear how Gajdusek’s published journals came to the attention of the FBI, though some reports suggest it was the doctor’s colleagues who were responsible. After investigations in 1989 and 1996, apparently focused on child pornography, produced no results, the FBI found a 24-year old-college student who had lived with Gajdusek when he was in his teens. They convinced the student to set up the 73-year-old doctor by recording telephone conversations in which the “victim” led Gajdusek to incriminate himself. At one point on the tape, the boy asked “Do you know what a pedophile is,” and Gajdusek responded, “I am one.”^[1]

After his arrest, Gajdusek received a great deal of support from colleagues. Though news reports don't indicate that any of them defended the doctor as a boy lover many medical professionals and academics refused to condemn him, pointing out that the crime of which he was accused didn’t undo his good works Perhaps most surprising were the number of people who pointed to the enormous amount Gajdusek had done for the children he adopted. Typically, any positive relationships boy-lovers have enjoyed are dismissed as cynical attempts at seduction and manipulation once a sexual component is revealed. For the most part, Gajdusek was spared this type of calumny.

The support continued after his imprisonment. After his release from prison in April, Science Now reported that “scientists in half a dozen countries have been vying to work with Nobel laureate D. Carleton Gajdusek.” He accepted an initial offer to work at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm beginning in July and was named to a six-month visiting professorship at the Department of Human Retrovirology of the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam beginning in September. He also received offers from labs in Norway, Finland, France, Germany and Israel. According to his lawyer, Mark Hulkower, Gajdusek will “travel the world and dedicate his life to science.”

^[1] Clearly the student and Gajdusek were here using “pedophile” in its vulgar sense of someone sexually interested in anyone younger than the prevailing laws or social conventions allow rather than with its scientifically defined sense of those attracted to pre-pubescent children, since neither a 16-year-old nor any other children to whom Gajdusek appears to have been attracted were pre-pubescent. Also, so far as is known, all the youngsters Gajdusek was drawn to sexually were boys – he was in fact a classic pederast. [Website footnote]