Reality television has reached its logical conclusion: somebody has died. Four somebodies, to be exact.
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.
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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.”
Three of the dead were children.
Editor
What, Europeans spreading diseases to indigenous people?
I never would have guessed.
b-b-but…it's science! Seriously, it's not only reigious "do gooders" (see At Play in the Fields of the Lord) that bring in disease. Where there's folly, ignorance and arrogance…this is a sad price to pay for fuckin' a TV show.
ok I'm not sure why all that got italicized, but whateves you get my point.
I suppose it doesn't get any more real than this…
yeah, at least they died in the name of television, and not in the name of rampant imperialism.
way better to die of the flu, than get shot in the neck with a poisonous blow dart, which is CLEARLY what would have happened to those kids if they remained in such indigenous and obviously substandard conditions.
ironically, i bet they don't even have TiVo.
I'd like to ban terrorists for the same fucking reason.
i'd like to shoot terrorists, and some political figures, AND some celebrities in the neck with a poisonous blow dart.
The worst part is that the shows ratings will probably go up because of the death of four innocent people.
Four our entertainment.
are you aware of the difference between 'reality tv' and a 'documentary'?