This was copied to me via e-mail. It will hopefully be of interest to the
rad-arch-forum community. I cannot vouch for its contents, but the American
Anthropological Association has already brought out a declaration on their
webpage (http://www.ameranthassn.org/)


Sent: Monday, September 18, 2000 7:38 AM
Subject: : Imminent anthropological scandal

    Scandal about to be caused by publication  of  book by
    Patrick Tierney (Darkness in El Dorado. New York. Norton.
    Publication date: October 1, 2000).

    Madam President, Mr. President-elect:

We write to inform you of an impending scandal that will affect the
American Anthropological profession as a whole in the eyes of the
public, and arouse intense indignation and calls for action among
members of  the Association. In its scale, ramifications, and sheer
criminality and corruption it is unparalleled in the history of
Anthropology. The AAA will be called upon by the general media and its
own membership to take collective stands on the issues it raises, as
well as appropriate redressive actions. All of this will obviously
involve you as Presidents
of the Association-so the sooner you know about the story that is about
to break, the better prepared you can be to deal with it. Both of us
have seen galley copies of a book by Patrick Tierney, an investigative
journalist, about the actions of anthropologists and associated
scientific researchers (notably geneticists and medical experimenters)
among the  Yanomami of Venezuela over the past thirty-five years.
Because of the sensational nature of its revelations, the notoriety of
the people it exposes, and the prestige of the organs of the academic
establishment it implicates, the book  is bound to be widely read both
outside and inside the profession. As both an indication and a vector of
its public impact, we have learned that The New Yorker magazine is
planning to publish an extensive excerpt, timed to coincide with the
publication of the book (on or about October 1st). The focus of the
scandal is the long-term project for study of the Yanomami of Venezuela
organized by James Neel, the human geneticist, in which Napoleon
Chagnon, Timothy Asch, and numerous other anthropologists took part. The
French anthropologist Jacques Lizot, who also works with the Yanomami
but is not part of Neel-Chagnon project, also figures in a different
scandalous capacity.

    One of Tierney's more startling revelations is that the whole
    Yanomami project was an outgrowth and continuation of the Atomic
    Energy Comissions secret program of experiments  on human
    subjects James Neel, the
    originator and director of the project, was part of the medical
    and genetic research team attached to the Atomic Energy
    Commission since the days of the Manhattan Project. He was a
    member of the small group of researchers responsible for studying
    the effects of radiation on human subjects. He personally headed
    the team that investigated the effects of the Hiroshima and
    Nagasaki bombs on survivors,. He was put in charge of the study of
    the effects of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and later
    was involved in the studies of the effects of the radioactivity
    from the experimental A and H bomb blasts in the Marshall Islands
    on the natives (our colleague May Jo Marshall has a lot to say
    about these studies in the Marshalls and Neel's role in them).
    The same group also secretly carried out experiments on human
    subjects in the USA. These included injecting people with
    radioactive plutonium without their knowledge or permission,in
    some cases leading to their death or disfigurement ( Neel himself
    appears not to have given any of these experimental injections).
    Another member of the same AEC group of human geneticists and
    medical experimenters, a Venezuelan, Marcel Roche, was a close
    colleague of Neel's and spent some time at his AEC-funded center
    for Human Genetics at Ann Arbor. He returned to Venezuela after
    the war and did a study of the Yanomami that  involved
    administering doses of a radioactive isotope of iodine and
    analyzing samples of blood for genetic data. Roche and his
    project were apparently the connection that led Neel to choose
    the Yanomami for his big study of the genetics of "leadership"
    and differential rates of reproduction among dominant and
    sub-dominant males  in a genetically "isolated" human population.
    There is thus a genealogical connection between the  the human
    experiments carried out by the AEC, and Neel's and Chagnon's
    Yanomami project, which was from the outset funded by the AEC.

    Tierney presents convincing evidence that Neel and Chagnon, on
    their trip to the Yanomami in 1968, 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. The epidemic appears to have been
    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 B) that had been
    counter-indicated by medical experts for use on isolated
    populations with no prior exposure to measles (exactly the
    Yanomami situation). Even among populations with prior
    contact  and consequent partial genetic immunity to measles, the
    vaccine was supposed to be used only with supportive injections
    of gamma globulin.

    It was known to produce effects virtually indistinguishable from
    the disease of measles itself.  Medical experts, when informed
    that Neel and his group used the vaccine in question on the
    Yanomami, typically refuse
    to believe it at first, then say that it is incredible that they
    could have done it, and are at a loss to explain why they would
    have chosen such an inappropriate and dangerous vaccine. There is
    no record that Neel sought any medical advice before applying the
    vaccine. He never informed the appropriate organs of the
    Venezuelan government that his group was planning to carry out a
    vaccination campaign, as he was legally required to do. Neither
    he nor any other member of  the expedition, including Chagnon and
    the other anthropologists, has ever explained why that vaccine
    was used, despite the evidence that it actually caused or at a
    minimum greatly exacerbated the fatal epidemic.

    Once the measles epidemic took off, closely following the
    vaccinations
    with Edmonson B, the members of the research team refused to
    provide any medical assistance to the sick and dying Yanomami, on
    explicit orders from Neel. He insisted to his colleagues that
    they were only there to observe and record the epidemic, and that
    they must stick strictly to their roles as scientists, not
    provide medical help.

    All this is bad enough, but the probable truth that emerges, by
    implication, from Tierney's documentation is  more chilling.
    There was, it turns out, a compelling theoretical motive for Neel
    to want to observe an epidemic of measles, or comparable
    "contact" disease, or at least an outbreak virtually
    indistinguishable from the real thing-precisely the effect that
    the vaccine he chose was known to cause-and to produce one for
    this purpose if necessary. This motive emerges from Teirney's
    documentation of Neel's extreme eugenic theories and his
    documented statements about what he was hoping to find among the
    Yanomami, interpreted against the background of his long
    association with the Atomic Energy Commission's secret
    experiments on human subjects.  Neel believed that  "natural" human
    society (as it existed everywhere before the advent of
    large-scale a gricultural societies and contemporary states with
    their vast populations) consisted of small, genetically isolated
    groups, in which, according to his eugenically slanted genetic
    theories, dominant genes (specifically, a gene he believed
    existed for "leadership" or "innate ability") would have a
    selective advantage, because male carriers of this gene could
    gain access to a disproportionate share of the available females,
    thus reproducing their own superior genes more frequently than
    less "innately able" males. The result, supposedly, would be the
    continual upgrading of the human genetic stock. Modern mass
    societies, by contrast, consist of vast genetically entropic
    "herds" in which, he theorized, recessive genes could not be
    eliminated by selective competition and superior leadership genes
    would be swamped by mass genetic mediocrity. The political
    implication of this fascistic eugenics is clearly that society
    should be reorganized into small breeding isolates in which
    genetically superior males could emerge into dominance,
    eliminating or subordinating the male losers in the competition
    for leadership and women, and amassing harems of brood females.
    A big problem for this program, however, was the tendency,
    generally recognized by virtually all qualified population
    geneticists and epidemiologists, for small breeding isolates to
    lack  genetic resistance
    to diseases incubated in other groups, and their consequent
    vulnerability to contact epidemics. For Neel, this meant that the
    emergence of genetically superior males in small breeding
    isolates would tend to be undercut and neutralized by epidemic
    diseases to which they would be genetically vulnerable, while the
    supposedly genetically entropic mass societies of modern
    democratic states, the antitheses of Neel's ideal
    alpha-male-dominated groups, would be better adapted for
    developing
    genetic immunity to such "contact" diseases. It is known that
    Neel, virtually alone among contemporary geneticists, rejected
    the genetic (and historical) evidence for the vulnerability of
    genetically isolated groups to diseases introduced through
    contact from other populations. It is possible that he thought
    that genetically superior members of such groups might prove to
    have differential levels of immunity and thus higher rates of
    survival to imported diseases. In such a case, such exogenous
    epidemics, despite the enormous losses of general population they
    inflict, might actually be shown to increase the relative
    proportion of genetically superior individuals to the total
    population, and thus be consistent with Neel's eugenic program.
    However this may have been, Tierney's well-documented account, in
    its entirety,  strongly supports the conclusion that the epidemic
    was in all probabilty deliberately caused as an  experiment
    designed to produce scientific support for Neel's eugenic theory.
    This remains only an inference in the present state of our
    knowledge: there is no "smoking gun" in the form of a written
    text or recorded speech by Neel. It is nevertheless the only
    explanation that makes sense of a number of otherwise
    inexplicable facts, including Neel's known  interest in observing
    an epidemic in a small isolated group for which detailed records
    of genetic and genealogical relations were available, his
    otherwise inexplicable selection of a virulent vaccine known to
    produce effects virtually identical with the disease itself, his
    behavior once the epidemic had started (insisting on allowing it
    to run its course unhindered by medical assistance while
    meticulously documenting its progress and the genealogical
    relations of those who perished and those who survived) and his
    own obdurate silence, until his death in February, as to why he
    carried out the  vaccination program in the first place, and
    above all with the lethally dangerous vaccine.

    The same conclusion is reinforced by considering the objectives
    of the anthropological research carried out by Chagnon under
    Neel's initial direction and continued support. Chagnon's work
    has been consistently directed toward portraying Yanomami society
    as exactly the kind of originary human society envisioned by
    Neel, with dominant males (the most frequent killers) having the
    most wives or sexual partners and offspring. If this pristine,
    eugenically optimal society could be shown to survive a contact
    epidemic with its structure of dominant male polygynists
    essentially intact, regardless of quantitatively serious
    population
    losses, Neel might plausibly be able to argue that his eugenic
    social vision was vindicated. If the epidemic was indeed produced
    as an experiment, either wholly or in part, the genetic studies
    on the correlation of blood group samples and  genealogies
    carried out by Chagnon and some of his students thus formed
    integral parts of this massive, and massively fatal,  human
    experiment.

    As another reader of Tierney's ms commented,  Mr. Tierney's
    analysis is a case study of the dangers in science of the
    uncontrolled ego, of lack of respect for life, and of greed and
    self-indulgence. It is a further extraordinary revelation of
    malicious and perverted work conducted under the aegis of the
    Atomic Energy Commission.

    Tierney's revelations begin, but do not end, with the 1968
    epidemic. There are many more episodes and sub-plots, almost
    equally awful, to his narrative of the antics of anthropologists
    among the Yanomami. Enough has been said by this time, however,
    for you to see that  the Association is going to have to make
    some collective response to this book, both to the facts it
    documents and the probable conclusions it implies.There will be a
    storm in the media, and another in the  general scholarly
    community, and
    no doubt several within anthropology itself. We must be ready.
    Tierney
    devotes much of the book  to a critique of Napoleon Chagnon's
    work  (and actions). He makes clear Chagnon has faithfully
    striven, in his ethnographic and theoretical accounts of the
    Yanomami, to represent them
    as conforming to Neel's ideas about the Hobbesian savagery of
    "natural" human societies , and how this constitutes the natural
    selective context for the rise to social dominance and
    reproductive advantage of males with the gene for  "leadership"
    or "innate ability" (thus Chagnon's emphasis on Yanomami
    "fierceness" and propensity for chronic warfare, and the supposed
    statistical tendency for men who kill more enemies to have more
    female sexual/reproductive partners). He documents how all these
    aspects of Chagnon's account of the Yanomami are based on false,
    non-existent or
    misinterpreted data. In other words, Chagnon's main claims about
    Yanomami society, the ones that have been so much heralded by
    sociobiologists and other partisans of his work, namely that  men
    who kill more reproduce more and have more female partners, and
    that such men become the dominant leaders of their communities,
    are simply not true. Thirdly and most troublingly, he reports
    that Chagnon has not stopped with cooking and re-cooking his data
    on conflict but has actually attempted to  manufacture the
    phenomenon itself, actually fomenting conflicts between
    Yanomami communities, not once but repeatedly.

    In his film work with Asch, for example, Chagnon induced Yanomami
    to enact fights and aggressive behavior for Asch's camera,
    sometimes building whole artificial villages as "sets" for the
    purpose, which were presented as spontaneous slices of Yanomami
    life unaffected by the presence of the anthropologists. Some of
    these unavowedly artificial scenarios, however, actually turned
    into real conflicts, partly as  a result of Chagnon's policy of
    giving vast amounts of presents to the villages that agreed to
    put on the docu-drama, which distorted their relations with their
    neighbors in ways that encouraged outbreaks of raiding. In sum,
    most of the Yanomami conflicts that Chagnon documents, that are
    the basis of his interpretation of Yanomami society as a
    neo-Hobbesian system of endemic warfare, were caused directly or
    indirectly by himself: a fact he invariably neglects to report.
    This is not just a matter of bad ethnography or unreflexive
    theorizing: Yanomami were maimed and killed in these conflicts,
    and whole communities were disrupted to the point of fission and
    flight.(Brian Ferguson has also documented some of this story,
    but Tierney adds much new evidence). As a general point, it is
    clear that Chagnon's whole Yanomami oeuvre is more radically
    continuous with  Neel's eugenic theories, and his unethical
    approach to experimentation on human subjects, than appears
    simply from a reading of Chagnon's works by themselves.

    Chagnon is not the only anthropologist mentioned in Tierney's
    narrative. Some of his students, like Hames and Good, are also
    dealt with (not so unfavorably). The F French  anthropologist,
    Jaques Lizot, also gets a chapter. He has had nothing to do with
    Neel or Chagnon (in fact has been a trenchant and cogent critic
    of their work), but he has an Achilles heel of his own in the
    form of a harem of Yanomami boys that he keeps, and showers with
    presents in exchange for sexual favors (he has also been known to
    resort to young girls when boys were unavailable). On the sexual
    front, there are also passing references to Chagnon himself
    demanding that villagers bring him girls for sex.

    There is still more, in the form of  collusion by Neel and
    Chagnon with sinister Venezuelan politicians attempting to gain
    control of Yanomami lands for illegal  gold mining concessions,
    with the anthropologists providing "cover" for the illegal mine
    developer as a "naturalist" collaborating with the
    anthropological researchers, in exchange for the politician's
    guaranteeing continuing  access to the Indians for the
    anthropologists.

    This nightmarish story  -a real anthropological heart of darkness
    beyond the     imagining of even  a Josef Conrad (though not,
    perhaps, a Josef Mengele)--will be seen (rightly in our view) by
    the public, as well as
    most anthropologists, as putting the whole discipline on trial.
    As another
    reader of the galleys put it, This book should shake anthropology
    to its very foundations. It should cause the field to  understand
    how the corrupt and depraved protagonists could have spread
    their poison for so long while they were accorded great respect
    throughout the Western World and generations of undergraduates
    received their lies as the introductory substance of
    anthropology. This should never be allowed to happen again.

    We venture to predict that this reaction is fairly representative
    of the response that will follow the publication of Tierney's
    book and the New Yorker excerpt. Coming as they will less than
    two months before the San Francisco meetings, these publication
    events virtually guarantee that the Yanomami scandal will be at
    its height at the Meetings. This should give
    an optimal opportunity for the Association to mobilize the
    membership and the institutional structure to deal with it. The
    writers, both emeritus
    members of the Committee for Human Rights, have arranged with
    Barbara Johnston, the present chair of the CfHR, that the open
    Forum put on by the Committee this year be devoted to the
    Yanomami case. This seemed the best way to provide a venue for a
    public airing of the scandal, given that the program is of
    course already closed. With Johnston's consent, we have invited
    Patrick Tierney to come to the Meetings and be present at the
    Forum. He has accepted. He has also agreed to have a copy of the
    book ms sent to Johnston, for the use of the CfHR. We have also
    tentatively
    agreed with Barbara that the CfHR should draft a press release,
    which the
    President (either or both of you) could (if you and the Executive
    Board approve) circulate to the media. There are obviously human
    rights aspects of this case that make the CfHR appropriate, but
    the Ethics Committee, the Society for Latin  American
    Anthropology, and the Association for Latina and Latino
    Anthropology should also be notified and involved, separately
    or jointly. These obviously do not exhaust the possibilities--- a
    lot of
    thought and planning remains to be done. Our point is simply that
    the time to start is now.

    Rosemary Gianno, Ph.D. Associate Professor of
    Sociology/Anthropology
    Rhodes Hall Keene State College Keene NH 03435-3400 USA

    [log in to unmask] Phone: (603) 358-2510 Fax:   (603) 358-2184


    George Aaron Broadwell,  [log in to unmask]
    Anthropology; Linguistics and Cognitive Science,
    University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, NY 12222 | 518-442-4711
    Web page: http://www.albany.edu/anthro/fac/broadwell.htm



---------- End Forwarded Message ----------



Manuel A Arroyo-Kalin
Department of Archaeology
University of Cambridge
Downing St.
Cambridge CB2 3DZ


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