The Kirby Institute joins our colleagues and friends in Papua New Guinea, Australia and all over the world in mourning the loss of Emeritus Professor Michael Alpers, who passed away on Tuesday the 3rd December 2024.
A ‘giant’ in medical and public health research, Emeritus Professor Michael Alpers was the second and longest serving Director of the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research (PNGIMR), with whom the Kirby Institute shares a very close partnership. Only three months ago he celebrated his 90th birthday with close family and friends including the current Director of the PNGIMR, and Kirby Institute Adjunct Professor, Willie Pomat.
Prof Alpers travelled from South Australia to work in Papua New Guinea as a junior medical doctor while the country was still under Australian administration. He quickly became involved in the study of kuru, which became a central focus of his long research career. Kuru is a degenerative neurological condition once common among the Fore people of Okapa District in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Kuru is the local word for “trembling”, reflecting one of the disease’s characteristic symptoms.
Prof Alpers’s work, along with others including Carleton Gajdusek and Shirley Lindenbaum, revealed that kuru was transmitted through mortuary rites involving transumption, an anthropological term for the ritual consumption of the deceased, incorporating the bodies of the dead into those of the living. Living and researching among the Fore, Prof Alpers became a consummate interdisciplinary researcher, understanding the complex biology at play, while coming to learn and hold a deep respect for the cultural and spiritual practices that surrounded the ongoing transmission of the disease.
“His patients and their families became his family; it was because of the deep trust the community had in him that he was afforded the opportunity to undertake now world-renowned scientific research on those who lost their lives to kuru, including children,” says Professor Angela Kelly-Hanku from the Kirby Institute, who holds an adjunct position with the PNGIMR. Prof Alpers's work on kuru has been the focus of several books and films.
Prof Alpers pioneering work become increasingly important in the late 1990s as the United Kingdom tackled an outbreak of a kuru-like disease that was named variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) linked to the consumption of beef from cows infected with what was commonly referred to as "mad cow disease”. He joined Australia’s efforts to prevent the incursion of vCJD, and was recalled as “a tremendous source of knowledge and wisdom” by the Kirby Institute’s Scientia Professor John Kaldor, who worked with him on national committees in this period.
Beyond kuru, Prof Alpers's legacy is wide-ranging and includes the PNG Medical Journal which he founded and continued to meticulously edit until recently. His legacy is perhaps felt most strongly in the lives of the scores of Papua New Guinea researchers he mentored and trained.
“Michael was instrumental in building research in malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea, lymphatic filariasis and other infectious diseases, work that the PNG IMR continues to this day,” said Prof Pomat when announcing Prof Alpers's passing to the staff at PNGIMR. Less well recognised is Prof Alpers's quick response to HIV as the virus emerged in PNG, tasking the late Carol Jenkins to lead pioneering work with sex workers and on male sexuality, work that is foundational to directions pursued by the PNGIMR with the Kirby Institute and other partners to this day.
Ensuring that the PNGIMR was supported internationally, Prof Alpers founded the Buttressing Coalition, that brought together research partners across the globe and continues to provide scholarly and financial support to assist the institute in remaining a national and global leader in medical and public health research.
In recognition of his outstanding contribution to medical research Prof Alpers was appointed to the Order of Australia in 2005 and in 2008, a companion of the Papua New Guinea Order of the Star of Melanesia.
Above all, Prof Alpers remained committed to the people of Fore and to kuru research until his passing. He had a deep respect for the Fore, and the reporters he trained and worked with to document and chart kuru. He made sure they travelled with him to England to mark the end of kuru at the UK Prion Unit. The countless children from Okapa he educated speaks to the breadth of his contribution to PNG.
“Michael was generous in his thoughtfulness, wisdom and time. He was both a scholar of medicine and the humanities, understanding the value and importance of understanding health and illness in their socio-cultural and temporal contexts.
He has left a legacy for us all, but most notable in the way he respected others, valued the cultures of the communities he worked in and in the generosity of his time and spirit he gave to all his relationships,” says Prof Kelly-Hanku.