Endocannibalism

Endocannibalism is a practice of cannibalism within one's own locality or community, most often associated with funerals or other mortuary rites. Among the Fore people of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, endocannibalism took the form of mortuary consumption of a deceased relative's body, intended to return the departed's life force to the community; the practice inadvertently transmitted kuru, a fatal prion disease that affected women and children far more often than men, because men typically ate muscle tissue while women and children consumed other parts of the body, including the brain, where infectious prion particles concentrated most heavily. The Fore ceased the practice around 1960, and the last known kuru carrier died in 2009, making the disease effectively extinct; the episode also led researchers to identify a gene variant that protects against prion disease.