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IT'S a snapshot of human evolution in progress. A genetic mutation protecting against kuru - a brain disease passed on by eating human brains - only emerged and spread in the past 200 years.
When members of the Fore people in Papua New Guinea died, others would eat the dead person's brain during funeral rituals. Kuru passed on in this way killed at least 2500 Fore in the 20th century until the cause was identified in the 1950s and the practice ended.
The example of kuru helped to show how BSE - mad cow disease - spread through the feeding of infected cattle brains to other animals, and how this led to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).
Simon Mead of University College London says the "anti-kuru" gene is the most clear-cut evidence yet of human evolution in action. ...
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