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From The Times
March 27, 2008

TV researcher 'brought fatal flu to Amazon tribe'

Alexi Mostrous

Amazonian tribes have called for film and television crews to be banned from their territories after a British production company was accused of starting a flu epidemic that killed four members of a remote Indian people.

Indigenous communities blamed a researcher from Cicada Films, based in London, for infecting members of the isolated Matsigenka tribe while scouting for a reality television show called World’s Lost Tribes.

Four members of the Matsigenka are thought to have died, three of them children. The Native Federation of River Madre de Dios and Subsidiaries, which represents local tribes, called for film crews to be banned.

In a statement, Cicada said it “emphatically denied” that its staff had done anything wrong. “When we arrived we found local people already ill with symptoms and signs of respiratory disease,” a spokesman said. “The researcher and his guide did not visit the area where the deaths are said to have occurred and no deaths occurred amongst the individuals they met.”

Glenn Shephard, a US anthropologist who has studied the Matsigenka for 20 years, said: “I warned [Cicada] specifically that their visit to the isolated villages of the Cumerjali could pose a health risk to the people.”

The Matsigenka tribe, who traded with the Incas 500 years ago, are spread out across southeastern Peru.

Filming primitive tribals is nothing but voyeuristic porn for jaded western audiences masquerading as educational documentary, and if these 'extreme tourists' knowingly took a chance and did infect these people they should be punished harshly.

Tony , Worthing , UK

This will be the way MAN will wipe itself out - not in war or even climate change but eventually through illness, plague, etc.

Ian Payne, WALSALL,

It is most likely true that they have caused these deaths as it is the local people that are most at risk from outside interference which is why in many places, it is very difficult to be allowed to visit such indigenous tribes.

Rob, Singapore,

In the 15th century it was known that indigenous tribes in South America did not have immune resistance to many diseases brought by colonisers.

There is evidence that Conquistadors would resorted to leaving contaminated blankets of smallpox to exterminate the original inhabitants.

The crew must have know the threat they posed and in spite of this still went ahead, for the sake of TV. Shocking.

sdHal0, London, u

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