Around 1950, something new took place in Australia. People were no longer allowed to practice cannibalism. This was important since Carleton Gajdusek was working in Papa New Guinea and noticed that the ritual cannibalism there might be linked to the neurodegenerative disease affecting the populations, especially when eating the brain. The number of cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the neurodegenerative disease for the people involved in the ritual, dropped shortly afterward.

The reason thought to cause the disease was castigated by other fellow scientists because what was suggested was that something composed entirely of protein was causing Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. However, this made the brain an area for transmission when ingested by people eating an infected person.

Papa New Guinea is one of the well-known sites for this and it is where research took place. The people being affected in the areas had different beliefs for what was taking place in their communities. A man named Dr. Johnson traveled there to work with people and would later win a Nobel Prize. Dr. Johnson said that he worked in New Guinea in 1964, shortly after cannibalism had ended, but while kuru—still a scientific mystery—was still killing 80 percent of the women in some villages while men were being ritually executed as witches to even out the populations.

Belief in sorcery and witchcraft was a large proponent for the people's actions, beliefs about the disease, and beliefs about what to do. Sorcery and witchcraft are difficult to combat in a community raised in the belief. People here in the United States may choose to laugh or ignore them, but a problem in one area could affect us and some our beliefs may seem silly to them too.