Newsweek International
Staking claims to the genetic wealth of Italian villages
Newsweek International Feb 26 , 2001
The mayor of Gioi walks the streets of his village like a doctor making the rounds in an intensive-care unit. He greets the few people he meets with forced heartiness, because Gioi is in danger of dying.
Guardian Unlimited
Centuries of isolation have turned the inhabitants of remote Italian villages into a living laboratory
Special report: the ethics of genetics
Rory Carroll in Rome
Monday October 30, 2000
The Guardian
Ten remote villages in southern Italy are this week becoming a "genetic park" where scientists can harvest the racially pure inhabitants' DNA to identify the causes of disease. Isolated for centuries by mountains and forest, the villagers' genetic history stretches back to the Greeks and could hold the key to cures for Alzheimer's disease, asthma, cancer and hypertension.
Villagers of Cilento share a common genetic heritage
By BBC science correspondent David Concar
Land of hilltop villages and chestnut forests, Cilento in southern Italy has always been a backwater. Unvisited and unloved, it has been ignored by just about everyone for centuries - until now.