movieboys proudly presents:
geniet och pojkarna

source:dvb
year:2009
runtime:89 min
genre:documentary
language:english
subtitles:swedish
url:n/a

plot:
Carleton Gajdusek fick Nobelpriset 1976 för upptäckten av galna kosjukan
hos ett kannibalfolk på Nya Guinea. Han var ett av världens största genier
och adopterade 57 barn från Söderhavet.

Men när hans karriär stod på sin höjdpunkt anklagades han för pedofili och 
spärrades in ett år i fängelse. Trots det försvaras han av legendariska 
vetenskapsmän som Oliver Sacks och kaosteorins Benoit Mandelbrot. En film 
av Bosse Lindquist om insiktens och sexualitetens gränser.




D Carleton Gajdusek won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of Prions - 
the particles that would emerge as the cause of Mad Cow disease - while working
with a cannibal tribe on New Guinea. He was a star of the scientific world. 
Over his years working amongst the tribes of the South Seas, he adopted 57 kids,
bringing them to a new life in Washington DC. His adoptions were hailed as 
wonderful fatherly beneficence. But, at the height of his career, rumours began
to spread he was a paedophile.

Gajdusek would argue that if sex with children was okay in their own cultures, 
he wasn't wrong to join in. How could a great mind like Gajdusek's lose insight
so totally, and why would the scientific community to which he was a hero be so 
quick to leap to his defence and dismiss the allegations?

Carleton Gajdusek himself participates in the film, as well as some of the men 
and women who came to know him closely as children - a majority of whom, when 
contacted by the film, claimed not to have been abused.

Leading scientist friends of Gadjusek, including Benoit Mandelbrot, one of the 
founders of Chaos Theory; Robert Gallo, who discovered HIV; and the world-famous 
author and neurologist Oliver Sacks, discuss whether matters of science can seem 
more important to some than questions about sex and criminality.

The film also features Gajdusek's own - previously never before released - films
of first contact with stone-age communities in the South Seas.

This striking and powerful documentary explores the limits of insight and the power
of self-delusion, through one of the century's true geniuses - a man prepared to defy
convention and challenge people's most cherished beliefs, a man whose scientific 
brilliance seemed to blind many to his extraordinary personal failings.