The sport has a natural and universal power of attraction, inspiration, motivation and commitment. It can be used to encourage individuals, communities and even countries to take part in activities promoting health. It can also be an effective tool in mobilizing resources for public health.

Furthermore, sport is of paramount importance to the economic level. It creates and sustains sector jobs assembling media producer and marketer of sports equipment, sports clubs, doctors, lawyers, coaches and advisers of all kinds; firms specializing in architectural design Stadiums and other sports facilities. Some professional athletes also derive income from their sport.

The government of Rwanda has invested in sports and leisure infrastructure which has made a progressive impact in the past decade. Despite what has been done so far, the need in terms of sporting and leisure facilities is concerned is still enormous. The need for Sporting and other leisure activities is important for the psychological and Physical development of the youth.

Demonstrating his own power has been not only a necessary condition of Chagnon's fieldwork, but a main technique of investigation. In a scientific reprise of a losing military tactic, he also attempted to win the hearts and minds of the people by a calculated redistribution of material wealth, and in so doing, managed to further destabilize the countryside and escalate the violence. Tierney quotes a prominent Yanomami leader: "Chagnon is fierce. Chagnon is very dangerous. He has his own personal war." Meanwhile, back in California a defender of Chagnon in the e-mail battles has lauded him as "perhaps the world's most famous living social anthropologist." The Kurtzian narrative of how Chagnon achieved the political status of a monster in Amazonia and a hero in academia is truly the heart of Darkness in El Dorado. While some of Tierney's reporting has come under fire, this is nonetheless a revealing book, with a cautionary message that extends well beyond the field of anthropology. It reads like an allegory of American power and culture since Vietnam.

Unfortunately, Tierney says, the portrait was inaccurate: "The Yanomami have a low level of homicide by world standards of tribal culture and a very low level by Amazonian standards ... The attempt to portray the Yanomami as archetypes of ferocity would be pathetic were it not for its political consequences." Indeed, the book became anthropology's bestseller, which brought the modern world to the tribe's doorstep. Other anthropologists wanted a piece of the action; filmmakers wanted to document their lifestyle; the Atomic Energy Commission wanted their unique, untainted blood for radiation studies. The Yanomami wanted to be left alone, but no one listened.

In the three decades chronicled in the book, the invading hordes gave them measles and weapons to kill each other, destroyed their homes and damaged their culture beyond repair.

Most cultural anthropologists now believe that the wars Chagnon witnessed were provoked by Chagnon himself. He offered axes, machetes, fishhooks and pots in exchange for ethnographic information, creating tensions among villages that vied for monopoly control of his wares. Within months of Chagnon's arrival in 1964, three different fights broke out between villages that had previously been at peace for decades. Anthropologist Brian Ferguson reports that Chagnon was "very much involved in the fighting and the wars. Chagnon becomes a central figure in determining battles over trade goods and machetes." A Yanomami reports that Chagnon offered him an outboard motor in exchange for help, including the procurement of a Yanomami wife. Shotguns, a seemingly unlimited supply of trade goods and willingness to don feathers, face paint and a loincloth allowed Chagnon to transform himself from an "improverished Ph.D. student at the bottom of the totem pole to being a figure of preternatural power." Tierney argues that many of Chagnon's data are simply false. The Yanomami do not have a particularly high murder rate, nor do men who kill reproduce more than those who don't. Neither are the Yanomami particularly well-nourished--a claim that Chagnon uses to argue that men fight over women and not food.

a memo (undated) from Terry Turner and Leslie Sponsel to Louise Lamphere and Don Brenneis. Their comments regarding Neel's use of measles vaccine are totally incorrect. Edmonston B vaccine which Neel administered at a time when an epidemic of measles was already underway (Amer J Epidemiology, 1970, 91:418-429, Neel et al) was a scientifically established and proven method of attempting to interrupt an outbreak. Nearly 19 million infants and children between 1963 and 1975 in the US and internationally received this licensed (by FDA) vaccine with or without immune globulin. Vaccine virus has never been transmitted to susceptible contacts and cannot cause measles even in intimate contacts. Drs. Turner's and Sponsel's memo indulges in hyperbole as well as errors ("virulent vaccine", "counterindicated by medical experts", "greatly exacerbated and probably started the epidemic of measles", etc.). Who are the unnamed "medical experts" they cite? Once again, I cannot comment on Neel's style, goals or objectives, but the use of Edmonston B vaccine in an attempt to halt an epidemic was a justifiable, proven and valid approach. In no way could it initiate or exacerbate an epidemic.