Summary
Chronic wasting disease (CWD), an incurable and fatal prion disease affecting deer, elk, moose, and reindeer, is spreading across 36 US states and other countries.
Scientists warn of a potential human spillover crisis, with tens of thousands likely consuming infected venison. Experts criticize labeling it “zombie deer disease” as it downplays the threat.
Concerns include contamination through carcass transport and feedgrounds. Calls grow for better surveillance and prevention, but conflicting policies and resistance to reducing wildlife feedgrounds hinder efforts.
Prions are some crazy shit. Can’t treat them, can’t destroy them, if you get one you’re just fucked with our current medical technology.
Holy shit, look at what you need to do to scrub these things:
Temperatures of more than 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit — sometimes up to 1,800 degrees
A combination of heat — about 275 degrees Fahrenheit — and bursts of unimaginably high pressure — over 100,000 psi — showed promise in reducing prion infectivity, at least in processed meats like hot dogs
Infected material is placed in a solution of potassium hydroxide — also known as caustic potash — for at least six hours, at 300 degrees Fahrenheit and 60 psi, about four times ambient air pressure.
These don’t sound like a scalable cure
My god
Few things on this planet scare me as much as misfolded prions. Disgusting freaks of nature, turning organisms into living evil paperclip factories!
I’m going to call it zombie deer disease and you can’t stop me, SCIENTISTS
Don’t worry. Lil Bobby Kennedy is going to eat all the infected deer or some stupid shit
I started using the acronym RKBW for road kill brain worm.
‘Don’t call it zombie deer disease’
We surely need a Ministry of Cool Names. Those scientists don’t understand what they are talking about.
hold on hold on hold on, it DOWNPLAYS the threat!?
I always thought that the zombie infection in fiction was a virus, maybe a fungi, not a prion.
Huh, makes sense - it would have been be something that causes misfolding proteins in the brain.
Bacteria and viruses are not much of a threat, our immune systems have been battling them for our entire evolutionary history. Every now and then one comes along and does a whole bunch of damage, but overall we come out on top.
Mammals haven’t really had to worry about fungus, we are too hot and there hasn’t been a forcing factor to make fungus evolve temperature resistance, till recently. We don’t have any defense against fungal infection; the temperature barrier has always kept us safe.
Global warming is forcing fungal evolution, our temperature barrier is shrinking, at some point in the not too distant future, there will be a major outbreak of a fungal disease.
The climate has been significantly warmer in the past than it is projected to become even in the worst-case near-future scenario. This won’t be some unprecedented opportunity for fungal parasites.
He says, full of Dunning-Kruger branded confidence, listing an event from 20 million years before apes evolved like it means jack shit.
Whilst this may be the case, 49MYa was a long time ago. Any mammals around at the time had probably evolved to deal with fungal infections.
But as the climate cooled back to similar levels that we have had in the recent past (last 200k years) those evolved traits would have been de-selected since they are a cost with no benefit.
The problem with the current warming is that the rate is much higher than in the past, fast evolving creatures (read small, with short generation cycles) can change much more quickly to deal with the new conditions; those of us that evolve much more slowly cannot compete.
Similar to the BSE/vCJD scare (or outbreak) in the UK a while back.
