The Search for a Cause: An Anthropological Perspective on a Neurological Disease in Guam, Western Pacific

In this anthropological study of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis/Parkinsonism-Dementia Complex (ALS/PDC) in Guam, Keck intertwines three separate perspectives of history, medicine and anthropology. This work is an important contribution to the decolonizing of biomedical research and argues that neurological diseases can be better understood if they are also seen as social and cultural phenomena. With sound ethnography linked to current controversial debates in neurology, Keck breaks new ground; her insights add to the hitherto few anthropological studies of neurodegenerative diseases in non-Western societies.