The People in the Trees

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Bethesda, Md. — Dr. Abraham Norton Perina, the renowned immunologist and director emeritus of the Center for Immunology and Virology at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, was arrested yesterday on charges of sexual abuse.

Dr. Perina, 71, was charged with three counts of rape, three counts of statutory rape, two counts of sexual assault, and two counts of endangering a minor. The charges originated with one of Dr. Perina’s adopted sons.

“These charges are false,” said Perina’s attorney, Douglas Hindley, in a statement yesterday. “Dr. Perina is a prominent and highly respected member of the scientific community, and is eager to resolve this situation as quickly as possible so that he may return to work and his family.”

Dr. Perina won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1974 for his identification of Selene syndrome, a condition that retards aging. The condition, in which the victim’s body remains preserved in relative youth even as his mind degrades, was found among the Opa’ivu’eke people of Ivu’ivu, one of the three islands of the Micronesian country of U’ivu. It was acquired through the consumption of a rare turtle for which Dr. Perina named the tribe and whose flesh was discovered to inactivate telomerase, the naturally occurring enzyme that disintegrates telomeres and thereby limits each cell’s number of divisions. Individuals affected by Selene syndrome — named for the immortal and eternally youthful moon goddess in Greek mythology — were found to be able to live for centuries with the condition. Perina, who first traveled to U’ivu as a young physician with the noted anthropologist Paul Tallent in 1950, spent many years in the islands conducting field research.

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