Changes

Medical and anthropological researchers gained a basic understanding of kuru in the 1950s and 1960s, by realizing a few important links. One link was the similarity between kuru victims' symptoms and "spongy" brain appearance in post-mortem examinations, and the symptoms and "spongy" brains of scrapie-infected sheep and CJD-infected humans. Another link was between the different roles adult men and women and children played in Fore communities; kuru was prevalent among women and children, but not men.

:Outside of marriage, [Fore] men and women lived largely separate lives. ... Women raised pigs, but the men ate the better meat, leaving the entrails for women and children, who supplemented their diet with vegetables, frogs, insects or rats. They were also responsible for preparing bodies for burial, and although eating of the dead was a rite of respect, love and mourning, simply hunger also seemed to play a role. ... Men rarely joined in the feast, and when they did, they ate the good parts, leaving the women with the brains and other internal organs.