Storyville: 13x15

The Genius and the Boys

D Carleton Gajdusek won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of Prions – the particles that would emerge as the cause of Mad Cow disease – while working with a cannibal tribe on New Guinea. Over his years working amongst the tribes of the South Seas, he adopted 57 kids, bringing them to a new life in Washington DC. But, at the height of his career, rumours began to spread he was a paedophile. Gajdusek would argue that if sex with children was okay in their own cultures, he wasn’t wrong to join in. How could a great mind lose insight so totally, and why would the scientific community to which he was a hero be so quick to leap to his defence and dismiss the allegations? This striking and powerful documentary explores the limits of insight and the power of self-delusion, through one of the century’s true geniuses – a man prepared to defy convention and challenge people’s most cherished beliefs, a man whose scientific brilliance seemed to blind many to his extraordinary personal failings.