Examines the destructive impact of journalists, anthropologists, and scientists on the Yanomami Indians, one of the Amazon Basin's oldest tribes. Tierney focuses on the behaviour of anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon and deceased geneticist James Neel, beginning in the late 1960s in isolated villages in Venezuela and continuing into the 1990's. Among other charges, they are accused of collecting blood from the Yanomami for the US Atomic Energy Commission without the natives' consent, and of possibly causing native deaths from using a measles vaccine. Tierney also describes how blood was acquired from the Yanomami with payment in steel machetes or axes, which he considers highly damaging to their culture.