Post by blackcrowheart on Mar 31, 2008 13:44:02 GMT -5
Filmmakers introduced killer flu: tribe
March 29, 2008
LONDON: A British production company making a reality television show in the Peruvian Amazon has been accused of starting a flu epidemic, which allegedly killed four members of a remote Indian tribe and left others seriously ill.
Indigenous communities blamed researchers from Cicada Films, based in London, for the alleged outbreak in the isolated Matsigenka tribe, which has had little previous contact with Western diseases.
The company has denied its team of two was responsible.
The Native Federation of River Madre de Dios and Subsidiaries, which represents local tribes, accused the filmmakers of "threatening the lives of the local people" and called for all film and television companies to be banned from the area.
Glenn Shephard, an American anthropologist who has studied the Matsigenka for 20 years, said he had met the research team in the less isolated village of Yomybato, where Westerners are allowed to go.
They were scouting for Discovery Channel's reality program Going Tribal and a sequel to Living With The Kombai Tribe.
One of the crew members had seemed dismayed at seeing people wearing Western clothes, playing football and attending a government-equipped schoolhouse, Dr Shephard said.
They were then said to have learnt about more remote settlements.
The crew left Yomybato on October 19 with a team of local helpers, he said.
Dr Shephard said that on November 10 a man had emerged from the upper Cumerjali saying the film crew had visited his community and that, soon after, four people had died.
In a statement Cicada Productions said it "emphatically denied" its staff had done anything wrong and called for a withdrawal of the accusations.
"There is no evidence that the researcher introduced illness to the areas he visited. He did not seek out or visit isolated communities upriver," it said.
Telegraph, London
March 29, 2008
LONDON: A British production company making a reality television show in the Peruvian Amazon has been accused of starting a flu epidemic, which allegedly killed four members of a remote Indian tribe and left others seriously ill.
Indigenous communities blamed researchers from Cicada Films, based in London, for the alleged outbreak in the isolated Matsigenka tribe, which has had little previous contact with Western diseases.
The company has denied its team of two was responsible.
The Native Federation of River Madre de Dios and Subsidiaries, which represents local tribes, accused the filmmakers of "threatening the lives of the local people" and called for all film and television companies to be banned from the area.
Glenn Shephard, an American anthropologist who has studied the Matsigenka for 20 years, said he had met the research team in the less isolated village of Yomybato, where Westerners are allowed to go.
They were scouting for Discovery Channel's reality program Going Tribal and a sequel to Living With The Kombai Tribe.
One of the crew members had seemed dismayed at seeing people wearing Western clothes, playing football and attending a government-equipped schoolhouse, Dr Shephard said.
They were then said to have learnt about more remote settlements.
The crew left Yomybato on October 19 with a team of local helpers, he said.
Dr Shephard said that on November 10 a man had emerged from the upper Cumerjali saying the film crew had visited his community and that, soon after, four people had died.
In a statement Cicada Productions said it "emphatically denied" its staff had done anything wrong and called for a withdrawal of the accusations.
"There is no evidence that the researcher introduced illness to the areas he visited. He did not seek out or visit isolated communities upriver," it said.
Telegraph, London