Who Are the Controversy's Main Characters?

James Neel, continued . . .

Neel is perceived as the first scientist to recognize the genetic basis for sickle cell anemia. He conducted research on the aftereffects of atomic radiation with survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings of World War II in Japan. He also suggested not only that there was a genetic basis for several modern diseases such as diabetes and hypertension but that such propensities resulted from an evolutionary adaptation to environments where salt and calories were less than abundant. He died in 2000, some months before the publication of Darkness in El Dorado.

Neel became interested in Amazonian Indians because of his research relating population genetics to principles of natural selection—whether certain genetic structures contained particular evolutionary adaptive advantages. Realizing that detailed studies of "civilized populations" would prove less instructive for examining early human genetic adaptations than "tribal populations," having the Amazon region fairly accessible, and knowing that Amerindians had entered the Americas fairly recently (he believed between fifteen and forty thousand years ago), Neel sought out relatively undisrupted groups in the Amazon for study. He wrote in his autobiography: "I realized we would probably never assemble from studies of existing tribal populations the numbers of observations necessary to relate specific genes to specific selective advantages, but at least we could take steps to define the range of population structures within which the evolutionary forces shaping humans had to operate" (1994:119). And in the journal Science Neel indicates that his studies were based on the assumption that Amazonian Indians were "much closer in their breeding structure to [early] hunter-gatherers than to modern man; thus they permit cautious inferences about human breeding structure prior to large-scale and complex agriculture" (1970:815). Initially, Neel studied the Shavante, another Amazonian Indian group. But in 1966 he turned to the Yanomami and worked with them until roughly 1976.

Two additional points need to be noted. First, Neel worked closely with Napoleon Chagnon during this period and, in the early years, helped fund Chagnon's research through his own research grants (which came partly from the Atomic Energy Commission). He viewed Chagnon as "indispensable" to his program: Napoleon Chagnon "had sought me out in Ann Arbor . . . having heard of our developing program. By virtue of the contacts I had already made, I could facilitate his entry into the field; he, for his part, in addition to pursuing his own interests, could put together the village pedigrees so basic to our work" (1994:134). Neel indicates in his autobiography that he encouraged Chagnon to work among the Yanomami.

Second, a devastating measles epidemic broke out "coincident with," to use Neel's phrasing, his arrival in the field in 1968. Neel indicated he had brought two thousand doses of measles vaccine and had planned to hand these over to missionaries in the region. But faced with the epidemic, Neel and his team vaccinated many Yanomami as well. Here is how Neel described his actions: "Much of our carefully designed protocol for that expedition was quickly scrapped as we dashed from village to village, organizing the missionaries, ourselves doing our share of immunizations but also treatment when we reached villages to which measles had preceded us. We always carried a gross, almost ridiculous excess of antibiotics—now we needed everything we had, and radioed for more" (1994:162). To what degree this description accurately reflects Neel's actions during the epidemic is one of the critical questions in the controversy. Tierney accused Neel of worsening the measles epidemic through his actions; others have suggested Neel could have done more than he did to save Yanomami lives during the epidemic.