During the days of his kuru research, Gajdusek had complained about newspaper reports that described the New Guinea Highlanders as "Stone Age cannibals" and referred to kuru as the "laughing disease."

In case Chambers should catch this new form of laughing sickness Nora decided to pay him a visit.

Pucky straightened up and announced with the pride of a conquering field general: "The serum for the laughing sickness!"

The Kuru disease is also known as the laughing sickness due to the pathologic bursts of laughter that the patient displays.

Kuru (disease), also known as "laughing sickness"

The laughing sickness?"

The Fore do indeed exist, and are the only group of people on earth known to be carriers of Kuru, the laughing sickness.

Kuru (also known as laughing sickness due to the outbursts of laughter that mark its second phase) was first noted in New Guinea in the early 1900s.

The 2006 film Apocalypto features a sufferer of 'the laughing sickness' who accosts the protagonists as they enter the Mayan city portrayed in the film.

He was particularly interested in kuru (laughing sickness), and lobbied the Australian government to establish the Papua New Guinea Institute of Human Biology.

Gajdusek provided the first medical description of this unique neurological disorder, which was miscast in the popular press as the "laughing sickness" because some patients evinced risus sardonicus as a symptom.

The term "kuru" derives from the Fore word "kuria/guria" ("to shake"), a reference to the body tremors that are a classic symptom of the disease; it is also known among the Fore as the laughing sickness due to the pathologic bursts of laughter people would display when afflicted with the disease.