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The Children a Scientist Took Home | The New Yorker

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Carleton Gajdusek won the Nobel Prize for his work on a disease in Papua New Guinea. But his biggest experiment was on the children he took back to the U.S.

Every weekday morning, Luwi Ikabala sets up a sewing machine beside piles of sweet potatoes and firewood at the main market in Goroka, in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Luwi uses a yellow cooking-oil cannister for a chair. On a good day, he makes enough money from hemming sleeves and mending torn clothes to buy a bag of rice. As he waits for customers, he reads novels, copying passages that he likes into his journal. His favorite author is Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He has kept a journal for the past forty years, giving the entries headings such as “Air of freedom,” “As I recall her—‘the past,’…

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