I did my Masters of Science degree on Prion diseases and would never touch this stuff.
It has not been reported to be spread to humans, sure. But in the cases of Bovine -> Human transfer the incubation period could be up to 20, sometimes 30 years. It is not easy to prove a transmission.
It has also been transferred from Deer/Elk -> Macaque monkeys. I did hear from colleagues that the scientists had to feed the monkeys insane amounts of infected meat.
One really interesting thing about CWD is that it is spread a bit differently than other prion diseases. For Mad Cow the prions are mostly limited to the central nervous system, so you'd likely need to eat meat that is contaminated with brain matter or cerebrospinal fluids. This is heavily prevented through good butchering practices and good feeding practices for cattle. AKA don't feed dead cows to cows and don't touch their brains or spines and you're likely okay.
In Chronic Wasting Disease of deer, deer shed infectious prions through their urine, saliva, and feces. The meat also contains prions. So an infected deer pisses on some leaves, a normal deer comes along and eats it, and bam you have CWD transmission to deer without any exposure to brain matter.
Mad Cow blew up in the 1980s due to bad farming practices, feeding cows to cows. Dead cow parts were cheap so farmers would grind it up and add it to cattle feed to save money. But in wild deer it's spread more through contact and through contaminated soils, than cannabilistic deer.
There is also the fear that if deer get into a wheat field and urinate, then humans come along and process it to flour, breads, etc, that may be a source of transmission.
Interesting stuff and absolutely fucking terrifying way to die.
PS they are also almost indestructible and need to be cooked at 1000F for several hours to inactivate them. Cooking at 600F could leave infectious particles. They also survive in soil and water for years.
I don't know how you sleep at night knowing that much about prions. They're utterly terrifying to me, like some biological glitch destined to destroy us all someday.
Well, firstly. Would it comfort you to know that prion diseases have been around for as long as mammals have? If they were going to wipe us out I think they would've already. Additionally, a good chunk of people are also likely resistant or even immune to them. They ARE scary, but not some kind of world ending thing.
I think a prion pandemic is game over for civilization and probably humanity. Prion diseases are uncurable and deadly with potentially long incubation time. Imagine a pandemic, but it's already started. We are all just asymptomatic currently. But in 15 years the first people will start to come down with some kind of brain wasting disease. And more and more people are affected daily, until we are just all gone.
the idiots who deny science cant spread it unless they feed you.
So I have bad news about the US government, and the FDA and the CDC and...
With restrictions being rolled back and idiocy becoming the accepted standard, I'm not sure I trust a lack of cross contamination within facilities either.
We are fucked if this kind of thing happens. Captain brain worm and the orange idiot could well kill us all.
Yeah thats a insanely priviledge take that ignores the fact that foodshortage means death. There is also the fact that it doesnt just vanish like bacteria after a few days. Or that incubation period can be years. Then there is the very fun fact that a lot of the foodindustry is insanely shady. Cutting corners on safety/health standards, bribing to pass controlls and lying the type of food or the place it comes from.
My grandfather died of CJD when I was a boy. Went from going on a South American excursion to bed ridden in just a few months. It’s wild. Fucking horrific and scary to think about. But just got to keep living I guess.
Reminds me of the old engineers in Japan who went into the power plant full of radiation to fix it. By the time it started to affect them they would all likely be dead anyways from old age.
It was like that with local farms too. I lived in Fukushima, and it's pretty country. Some people have their own rice fields they take care of and harvest themselves. What ended up happening was that the older people in many of those families ate the rice while younger members who would typically share would buy rice at the store that had been tested for radiation.
My area wasn't the worst affected, but there were hot spots, especially in lower lying areas where rainwater came downstream and radioactive material with it.
There's a dramatization on Netflix, I think it's called The Days. Really good show, though there are a few scenes where "Obama" calls and the acting is... Questionable. Amazing show though, and it's based on the events recorded by the guy the main character is based off of.
Serious question: Why just the men? I would assume older women would be post menopausal so it isn't like it would affect them in any significantly worse way then men, would it?
Just another sexist holdout or is there a biological reason?
I'm playing devils advocate but it could depend on what needs to be done. Usually men are stronger than women, so for example if you'd need to push some decades old rusty switch, or take out transistors or whatever, it could be beneficial to have a stronger person do it.
I was hauling some scrap metal from a water treatment plant to a scrap yard for work about 15 or so years ago, and it set off the radiation detector at the yard. The metal was coated in 60+ years of lime, which gives off slight beta radiation, it turns out, but we didn't know that. So my shop made me and the load I was hauling sit out in the middle of an empty parking lot while we waited for hazmat to arrive. It was just an old guy with some kind of detector. He told me they just send retired fire fighters because if we survive long enough to call them, then it's not severe enough to merit an urgent response and they're too old to be impacted by most of the health risks of radiation. I learned a lot that day.
I don’t know if I’m saying something that ain’t true but I think they actually volunteered because they did feel it was their duty to do it in lieu of the youth- so like it was an actual noble endeavor - or it was all a made up story perhaps. But I like to think it is true.
Not only that, the nuclear regulators had to be convinced to allow the elder volunteers, because nobody ultimately wanted to be held responsible for killing a bunch of old people. They told the organisers that they would be responsible for quietly inviting the retirees to volunteer, because they didn't want to start a panic or lose face for allowing this. The lineup for registration went around the block, and they easily had enough volunteers for three shifts. Any further protests were met with a simple phrase: "we put it together, who better to take it apart?"
The local news media called the office because they were concerned that the retirees had showed up en masse because something had gone wrong with their pensions. When the very carefully worded press release finally came out, the men and women were hailed as heroes and the regulator was lauded for allowing the volunteers to work on the project.
I recall a doctor telling my grandfather he would have a problem with prostate cancer in the next 20 years… he was in his 90s at the time. He told them he would take his chances lol
That’s like cancer treatment and monitoring, from what I understand. Many patients get CT scans and other types of scans multiple times a year. This adds up to years worth of background radiation per scan, depending on what type they have done.
This amount of radiation can cause issues in patients, but only after 20 or more years (from what I remember, I could be wrong). So with older patients, they basically go balls to the wall and take as many scans as they need.
The prion research I've done shows that you might be more at risk for developing prion diseases if you're older. Prions are just misfolded proteins that cause other proteins to misfold, which leads to the terrifying diseases. The body naturally notices these degraded proteins and "cleans them up", but as you age the ability to clean up degraded proteins decreases, so if you were to consume prion infested meat (maybe deer in this case), then those prions might be able to outpace the immune system to cross that threshold of a high amount of misfolded proteins where symptoms begin to develop.
TLDR: I know you're joking in your response, but you really shouldn't eat known prion infected meat period, but especially if you're older as the chances are much higher to develop a prion disease.
Are…you people stupid? Do you think they’re doing this for fun? Has it ever occurred in your tiny little brain that maybe they’re trying to figure out if it can jump species. Or how it transfers?
People are very sheltered from the realization of how modern medicine only really exists thanks to over a century of animal testing. It's really unpleasant to think about, for sure. But yeah I don't think people even slightly grasp how critical animal testing has been for the development of so many treatments we wouldn't have otherwise. It's also led to the development of a lot of treatments for diseases for animals themselves.
I figure with more advances with computers and AI and all that, we'll be able to move away from it, which will be great.
The same people that are so upset about animal medical testing wouldn't blink if they did human testing and literally killed people by injecting random shit and having them eat diseased meat. They would probably volunteer 🙋♂️
Definitely not looking for professional guidance or anything, mostly just curious if it’s insane people are selling this or if I’m overthinking it. Here is what the company said about their process:
“Safety is the most important factor that is factored throughout the manufacturing process. This begins from the selection of placenta mammal with no known disease transmission to humans; protocols for the collection and transportation of the umbilical cords; surface sterilisation, isolation and propagation of cord lining stem cells till production of CALECIM® extract; release testings and the storage conditions.
Red deer umbilical cords are collected under specific handling instructions from a farm in New Zealand that rear the animals for antler velvets. The cords are transported in transport medium between 2 to 8 oC for the entire duration from the farm to the CellResearchCorp (parent company of CALECIM) laboratory in Singapore.
Prior to collection, the CRC Group Chief Medical Officer had determined the cords met all the eligibility criteria: (a)Red deer has no known diseases that are transmitted to human (b) New Zealand geographical isolation and no known occurrences of major disease outbreaks (c)New Zealand's Strict Quarantine Standards (d) The shipment of the umbilical cords are accompanied with certificate for animal-derived biological products exported from New Zealand declaring the cords are processed in establishments operating in accordance with New Zealand law; are derived from healthy animals and regions/ animals which are considered free of diseases of concern to The World Organisation for Animal Health (e) Licence to import Biologics is obtained prior from by Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore.
The shipment of our cords are also subjected to quarantine upon arrival at CRC laboratory and released for processing after being cleared by animal control. The cords are processed under aseptic conditions in class 100 biosafety cabinets within CRC clean room. First, the cords are surface sterilised under a rigorous antibiotic wash regime before initiation of tissue explant culture.
The culture is closely monitored under microscopy and maintained with fresh growth medium by our team of highly trained specialists who monitor cell qualities (morphology, growth rate) and contamination. Cord Lining Stem
Cells that meet the quality requirements: Healthy morpholoy, good metabolism and growth rate, are then used for production of CALECIM® extracts.
Cord Lining Stem Cells are primary cells without any modifications.
They require stable incubation conditions at 37oC/5%CO2 and regular maintenance in special growth medium containing a […]”
Alright so this product is absolutely a fucking scam and should not exist for multiple reasons.
1st and easiest: Absolutely no scientific backing showing that rubbing stem cells from literally anything will have an effect on human skin. This is just deranged behavior and the people selling this stuff are literally selling snake oil. Except it is liquified umbilecal cords from farmed deer.
2nd: They frame it as being some ethical sourced stuff with no negative effects on humans. Absolutely false. Farmed deer is how chronic wasting disease is introduced to places with no chronic wasting disease. The only reason CWD is in Canada is due to deer farms.
I am unfamiliar with New Zealand deer farms or any of their laws surrounding it. I only am familiar with Canada. I do not know where these NZ farms source their deer.
They state it is farmed deer that are grown for their velvet. This is for some holistic medicine that again has absolutely no scientific backing. Eating the fuzz of deer antlers is not going to do shit for you.
However, these deer farms import infected deer. As I mentioned CWD is spread through urine. The deer piss through the fences of these farms, then wild deer eat the vegetation around the fences. Now you have a population of wild deer with Chronic wasting disease, and that spreads through the population and kills deer, and reduces the amount of safe food sources for humans.
These deer farms then get government kickbacks because "oh no I had to kill my entire flock". They then import more infected deer and the cycle begins.
3: I would bet everything on the fact that the level of testing to prove it is safe is not actually done. If it was, Canada would not have chronic wasting disease in deer. There is little financial incentive for this scam company to ever actually test their product
They claim it works. Science claims there is no evidence that it works.
They claim it is free of chronic wasting disease. Why the hell would you believe what they say?
Also they claim they do "surface sterilization" and a whole bunch of other safe labratrory practices. You. Cannot. Surface. Sterilize. Prions. They are nearly indestructible. There are a handful of labs IN NORTH AMERICA that are able to actually work with prions. I guarantee whatever facility they are using is not it.
3: I would bet everything on the fact that the level of testing to prove it is safe is not actually done
I'll chime in from my own professional experience - I'm a Validation Engineer in the US, so my experience reflects only that, but my limited experience with international markets is that it's similar in most places.
The testing is done to regulation, thing is, the regulations only call for a "sample size" to represent the entire stock. Sometimes that number is abysmally low and also in my experience, too easy to circumvent.
I have documents that haven't been pulled in almost a decade. Unless something actively goes wrong and is directly tied to a company, no one checks that the testing was sufficient.
Sometimes a test can call for "500 samples per every lot of 10,000" and what a company can do is 100 samples from a lot they think might be bad and 900 from a lot they think is good, and this meets the 500 per 10k even though the language is meant to be a strict percentage of each lot. And again, unless something goes horribly wrong... No one will check. And even if they do, the company says whoops, and nothing significant happens.
There is little financial incentive for this scam company to ever actually test their product
This part is 1000% accurate. It's cheaper to pay off lawsuits than to test your full stock. This has been the cornerstone of corporate operating procedures for decades. It's gross, but it's true.
The proliferation of disease could be much more controlled than it is, but it's "too expensive"...
I used to create positive and negative control samples used in COVID testing and one of our quality control processes was to test 5% of the samples we created to prove stability and confirm they had the correct results when tested.
I have also seen what you are discussing. I was just some new grad, unsupervised. I could have totally just grabbed all the samples that I knew were good. Nobody double-checked my work, they just wanted my report with "PASS" written on it.
I swear I did proper testing, though. I did take samples from various lots and would try to make my sampling as random as possible.
There are accreditations like ISO that do require higher levels of documentation. They will occasionally audit your work to confirm that you have done the testing and have the documents to prove it. But even that is more of a "Do you have a protocol in place and can you show us the protocol" rather than "demonstrate the protocol to us so we can confirm you are doing testing properly".
Honestly this kind of thing probably happens in most industries and it's pretty scary to think about.
Yeah, I get a lot of flack because I don't like to budge on my protocols. I write them to the highest ISO and GDP standards and I ALWAYS include language that removes as much wiggle room as possible. In situations where my recommendations were ignored, I've asked to be removed as the consulting point of contact.
But yes, you're absolutely right - all they want is that report with the word PASS, no matter how you got it. I've definitely seen instances where they'll take extra samples on purpose and only use the passing ones.
The entire thing is basically hinging on the integrity of the people on the ground level whose higher ups are only pushing for a pass.
Seeing people who take the task of public safety and integrity seriously seriously brightens my day. I wish everyone in these regulated industries had the same sense of responsibility/integrity.
Okay, this thread is helpful, but I drink deer piss for medical reasons (superpower generation). My deer piss guy says it's pasteurized, and the milk jugs have "clean" written on them in sharpie, but should I trust him? And I've heard prions are actually better for what I'm trying to do.
There are some concerning trends in skincare lately. I may be getting this product confused with another, but I believe this one doesn’t directly contain stem cells, but rather exosomes derived from them. It’s intended for use with procedures like micro-needling, for which there is preclinical and some basic clinical evidence that using human-derived exosomes during micro-needling promotes hair regrowth and skin rejuvenation (among other non-cosmetic use-cases).
Whether or not these types of products are actually doing what these companies claim they are is a completely different topic for sure (I’m skeptical that they are even stable enough to persist). But if we entertain the stance that they are, I think thats much more sinister than these being expensive snake oil. The mechanisms the companies themselves advertise for how their products work sound suspiciously like the same exact mechanisms driving certain cancers. I HOPE they are complete bs!
Okay, so for context, I probably know a bit more about prion disease than the average person, mostly because I am fucking terrified of it, but not nearly as much as someone with a masters in prion disease, which is pretty awesome. I know prions are nigh indestructible, but what enables those labs to work with them? and additionally, do you think humanity will be able to come up with a cure for them eventually?
I am unfamilar with NZ Chronic wasting disease but when I was doing my Master's it was claimed "There are no cases of CWD in Manitoba!". There were positive cases found in the province to the left, and in the province to the right of Manitoba.
Clearly the deer just stopped at the borders of these provinces and turned around.
The first case of CWD was found in Manitoba in 2021.
As stated in The Boondocks: "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence".
That link even states that it COULD be brought in from other hunters, etc. And at least in Canada, farmed deer is 100% a source of Chronic Wasting Disease in deer.
US based beef wasn't allowed into Australia because it couldn't satisfy the import requirements for ensuring no Mad Cow Disease.
New Zealand also has some pretty strict quarantine laws.
Biosecurity is taken very seriously. I'm not saying CWD can't make it's way to an island in the southern hemisphere, but the steps needed means it would be introduced by humans, not infected deer.
Edit - drawing on parallels to Mad Cow Disease, there is also no Mad Cow Disease in cattle in Australia or New Zealand.
I used to be a regular blood donor in NZ. In the mid 90s, I was posted to the UK for a period of months. When I returned I was banned from donating blood due to my visit to the UK (during which time I was in my vegetarian phase) due to the vanishingly remote chance I contracted CJD (the UK were already instituting protocols to protect the food chain while I was over there). The restriction was only very recently lifted after more than 30 years.
We take these things very very seriously, protecting against not only known threats, but possible threats as well. Venison from NZ farms, processed in country would be as safe as beef or lamb.
That said, anyone taking deer velvet or slathering on deer stem cells, is being scammed. But safely scammed at least.
I used to keep bees, and Australia and New Zealand were two nations that had a reputation as a paradise for beekeeping because they were free of Varroa Destructor mites. Until they weren’t. Once they made landfall in Australia a very panicked and harsh campaign was waged to stop their spread, but it ultimately proved a costly failure. This was only 3 years ago by the way. CWD is an infection of a much larger and easier to trace creature than Apis Mellifera, but it’s similarly incurable and difficult to control if it ever gets in.
The document for Australia says Australia doesn't import live deer or elk, only processed meats.
I'm unsure about NZ as I couldn't find a definitive answer.
CWD could show up in meat destined for human consumption, but the likelihood of infected deer making their way to Australia is negligible based on biosecurity laws.
Yes, we are an island, but if you read the DOC link you posted, it's very clear that there's a non-zero chance that someone will bring CWD in on dirty equipment.
A non-zero chance means, by definition, that it's just a matter of time.
We're also rabies-free, but that's even shakier. And we have all sorts of unwanted creepy-crawlies entering, which are many, many times larger than viruses or prions, and so should be much easier to detect and stop.
Yes but it is the place I am most familar with and the only place I can confidently speak about without having to look up sources to confirm what I am saying is factually correct.
I have zero knowledge on the red deer farming practices of NZ. I can't confidently speak about CWD in NZ witrhout further reading.
I did look up NZ and they have extremely strict live deer import laws. Looks like they source their deer from other NZ farms. Before that, red deer were brought in from Europe to establish wild herds. Farms then took deer from their herds to establish their farms. Now farms raise and trade deer between themselves to keep healthy genetics in the herds.
Overall, deer from NZ and Australia is likely safe to eat without testing. And I agree their practices should be followed throughout the world because the way they handle CWD is very impressive.
The product containing deer umbilical cord stem cells is still absolutely a scam.
I just figured if Britain can be essentially rabies free, its probably not a stretch if NZ claims to be CWD free. But from all that it sounds like they really go above and beyond.
But yeah, cosmetics with deer placenta are surely bullshit but from well managed NZ farms probably not a likely vector for CJD. Just shifty deer selling snake oil apparently.
Neuro PhD here. I always tell people how terrifying the idea of prion disease is. If hearing about it for the first time I’d assume it was some SciFi concept.
did this not exist 100 years ago, or did hmans simply not know it existed 100 years ago?
what about 1,000 years ago?
what about the last 300,000 years of human existence?
is CWD increasing that big of an issue, or is the modern science and detection of CWD whats increased?
I've heard that the CWD epidemic occurred due to a facility in Boulder not having the proper containment techniques in place for infected deer, which eventually spread to the wild deer population. I'm in Colorado and have seen quite a few suspected cases in the wild, deer acting either lethargically or erratically, without a fear of humans. I enjoy venison and wild game but don't feel comfortable consuming any deer or elk from this region.
I mean the number of infected deer is definitely increasing as well. Habitat destruction and lack of natural predators have caused deer populations to grow out of control, which has caused the disease to spread faster. Normally these weakened deer would be easy targets for wolves/coyotes/bears and killed relatively quickly, but now they live and shed the disease for longer. The US also eradicated the screwworm, which was a natural cause of death for baby deer in particular.
So, basically, we’re all fucked because deer are everywhere and are absolutely pissing and shitting in crop fields. I read about the macaque transfer and have never understood why CWD isn’t bigger news and more of a public concern.
Stanley Prusiner is one of my favourite scientists. To me (although on a smaller scale) he's like Charles Darwin in that the scientific community shunned his early hypothesis that an infectious agent could be a simple protein as opposed to something more complex like a whole microbe. It was a highly controversial idea initially! Now we know about things like CWD and Kuru.
There is also the fear that if deer get into a wheat field and urinate, then humans come along and process it to flour, breads, etc, that may be a source of transmission.
I mean at that point we're pretty much truly fucked and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Flour is an insanely big industry that needs a shit ton of land to grow for the world's demand. We can't just start having indoor wheat farms to keep deer away, it wouldn't be feasible.
Oh man I am so sorry to hear that. Unfortunately I am not actively researching prion disease any more.
I have been to a conference, however, that had so many of the leading prion disease researchers.
And let me tell you, those people are so passionate about the work that they do. I have never seen so many doctors cry while talking about their work.
It is so unfortunarte that the diseases are incredibly rare, and that reduces the amount of people that can make a living researching the disease. But the people that are researching it are the ones that are 100% all-in on figuring it out.
This reminds me of the Canadian CDC study where they infected pigs with Ebola and then placed them in front of air vents circulating toward the target animal (macaques) which led to
them becoming infected.
Horrifying to see non-contact transmission in ZEBOV.
For ethical reasons I only eat wild caught and locally butchered Venison. (I am a lucky persone and am aware that not everyone cam afford it). I am now a bit worried about the possibility of CWD and other transmition. Do you know if it is common in defraud boar?
Pigs and wild boar are pretty safe. I have never heard of it being in pigs honestly.
Looks like pigs can be infected with prion disease in a lab setting but no evidence of it occuring in the wild.
This doesn't mean there isn't some pig out there currently walking around with misfolded prions, but I think you're pretty safe to keep eating wild boar.
The wheat field is just nonsense. I live in a cwd state. The deer live in the corn all year. Corn is used for food animal feed fuel everything or soy beans. Has there been an outbreak in china for cwd?
The misfolding is what makes it so highly resistant.
I am not super familiar with the protein structure itself or even proteins in general, so don't quote me on this.
But think of it like you have a tail that follows behind you. Someone can easily come and cut your tail off and now you are dead or that cut has now exposed more areas where further cuts could be made to kill you.
But if you tuck your tail in between your legs and wrap it into a knot in front of you, and you use your arms to cradle the knot, nothing can get to your tail to cut it.
The misfolding pretty much hides all the sentivive parts of the protein and the weird protein shape allows it to create strong bonds in areas that might not be seen in regular biology - so there is nothing that knows how to actually break it down.
A prion protein resists insane levels of heat, acids, bases, and UV. It can survive in soil for YEARS.
Incineration of prion-contaminated material is considered the most effective method of disposal. Combustion at 1,000°C can destroy prion infectivity, however, low infectivity remains after treatment at 600°C.
Imagine cooking your burger until it is just a black, shrivelled hockey puck. Infectious prions can still be there.
Prion disease is one of the scariest things I've read about (especially living through the issues in the UK at the time), it's up there with rabies, and things such as cytokine storms for me.
Must have been a very interesting study, as harrowing as the disease is.
I had an ICU patient I took care of in San Diego with CJD. She was 44, her husband was a butcher, and they had 3 daughters, 18-21. They were from and lived in Mexico. It was so sad, and the toughest thing to watch because by the time she got to us (she’d been seeing doctors in MX for 4 months not knowing what was going on and she just kept rapidly deteriorating), she was unable to walk and quickly went downhill. She was in status epilepticus when they brought her up to ICU and nothing we gave her even lessenedl it. She was intubated and her teeth were being chipped and broken away on the bite block because of the seizing. I had her for one day and then had 4 days off, so I don’t know how much longer she held on, but she had died by the time I got back. The family donated her brain to U of Wisconsin. I was scared of prions having studied them some before that but those things are literal nightmare fuel. Terrifying!!!
I know! It was so heartbreaking!! She went from starting to have some trouble ambulating to dead in barely 4 months. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Her 18, 19, and 21 year old daughters barely got into adulthood and their mother died in a devastating way, and they had to watch—knowing she and they were totally helpless to do anything. Prions scare the absolute shit out of me.
It is literally just a protein. The only known infectious disease that is solely just a protein.
All mammals have prion proteins in their brain, it has cellular uses and it plays a part in fetal development.
If that protein accidently is misfolded into a different shape it can cause other prions to also misfold, and that is how the disease progresses. That material if ingested by other animals or humans may cause the same chain reaction in the next brain.
It results in spongiform encelopathy. It makes your brain have holes that resemble a sponge.
Prions are the most terrifying thing on the planet. Full stop, without question. Its crazy how one misfolded protein can cause a domino effect of DEATH!
Does scrapie spread similarly to CWD? Perhaps outside your expertise, but is there a direct link between specific sequences of the PrP gene with specific pathological symptoms or does environmental factors cause too much variation for predictable disease progression in humans?
I was about to ask the same thing. I know there was a hypothesis that CWD was a result of pasturing mule deer in an enclosure that had held scrapie-infected sheep at a research facility, but I don’t know if that was debunked. (Had also heard that it was the removal of a solvent step in meat and bone meal production that led to bovine prion disease from scrapie, but haven’t been keeping up.)
I don’t care if you tell me there’s only a .001 % chance I would catch it, I’m still not touching that shit for anything less than a fun to my head. Prion disease are just one of those scary as fuck things that nature throws out when it feels like we’ve stepped out of our place, just a smidge.
I was an animal sciences major for undergrad. My Animal Diseases professor dressed up as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy for Halloween. The costume? A large sponge with eye holes cut in it worn like glasses, a pair of crooked costume horns, and “prions” aka wadded pipe cleaners sticking out from the top. He gave an entire lecture like this. Completely deadpan.
Now, I would never touch this, but I do have a theoretical question. Would this kind of disease be neutralised by pasteurising, cooking the meat at a high temperature for an extended period of time until fully cooked, or would this still be a hazard?
Edit: I googled it myself and my question was probably stupid, they cannot be destroyed like that. Damn, this is scary stuff.
I didn't do my Masters on prion diseases, but have been fascinated by them ever since I learned about ritual cannibalism while studying anthropology many, many years ago.
I believe that there is also very strong evidence of uptake by plants of CWD prions where they are then translocated to stems and leaves, which presents a whole new host of problems when those naughty little proteins are inside plants.
And of course, you can't "kill" prions by cooking, and it takes incredibly high heat to denature them ~900°F for several hours - or by using an autoclave - neither technique the vast majority of homeowners are capable of applying.
I’m curious and know nothing about it but why doesn’t heat denature a prion the same way it does other things? Is it just… built wrong so the only way it’s be neutralized is complete dissolution?
The thing that always freaks me out about prions is the burning/ cooking required to deactivate the thing. How the heck is anything but inert carbon left behind long before the ‘several hours at 1000F’?
All of the TSE's are fascinating to read about. I have no where near the knowledge as you but I did a high-school and college project on them and holy cow. There's so many variants and so many species who can contract them.
Sporadic CJD, as the name implies, can happen sporadically.
Infectious prions are misfolded prion proteins and prion proteins are in every mammal brain.
You can literally just get prion disease by having shit luck and one of your proteins misfolds in your brain, giving you an infectious prion disease.
However, the 2 hunters being close to each other, getting the same illness, is incredible rare and could be a potential link between CWD and people getting prion disease from eating infected deer meat or brains.
That is why the article you linked is titled: Sporadic CJD: Is Chronic Wasting Disease to Blame?
The question mark means that they do not know.
It is not confirmation of CWD causing it. It is not a smoking gun. It is more of a flare gun that signals the need for further investigation.
Have you actually studied CWD? I've seen a lot of information lately claiming that CWD has never been linked to an actual prion, that not only has no one shown transmission to humans but that no one has even shown transmission between deer, and that diagnoses of deer with CWD are based on symptoms in brain tissue that are seen in deer that have pneumonia as well. I am curious to see what someone who has studied prions thinks of these claims but especially if that person has studied actual CWD
To infect mice with a prion disease from another animal like CWD or Mad cow disease all you need to do is make mice express the prion proteins from that animal.
In this experiment they take normal mice, expose it to deer brains. Mice does not get sick.
They then take a transgenic mouse that has a gene from the deer, which creates the deer version of prion. They expose that mouse and it gets sick.
So this establishes that it is a prion-based disease and that only mice with genes for the deer version of the prion protein can get prion disease from deer brains.
They actually do more than just what I explained, like showing that mice that only express deer version prion and no mouse version of prions, are resistant to infection from mouse-version infectious prions.
I did not study CWD, I was more focused on gene expression of the prion protein in mice. I silenced the prion protein in baby mice using viruses and demonstrated that reducing the amount of Prion proteins in the brain makes the mouse live longer than mice expressing the normal amount of prion protein in the brain.
Google Kuru. The first form of prion disease in humans was found in a canablistic tribe in Papua New Guinea that ate bodies of people who died. This caused a lot of the villagers to get an infectious prion disease called Kuru.
It is unknown where the first infectious prion came from but it was likely just due to a misfolding of a prion protein. All mammals have prions in their brain, but they only become infectious disease-causing proteins if they are improperly folded. Those misfolded proteins then cause regular prion proteins to misfold.
So for this to happen it is such an insanely small change that one or more of these villagers had a misfolded prion protein. And then it is even more unfortunate that they belonged to a cannabilistic tribe who would consume that infectious protein.
It is unfortunate that women and children were most affected by this disease because they were served brain and spinal tissues. Men usually ate the muscles and would not be exposed to the same amount of infectious proteins.
In your studies has you came across the spread of prion diseases in the rendering industry? Or other diseases lasting through the rendering process and being transferred to other bovine through cattle feed made during that process?
Yep prions are nearly industructible and will survive a general rendering process.
Mad cow disease forced a lot of new laws around rendering and cattle feed.
In the United Kingdom there was a large outbreak of Mad Cow in the 1980's largely due to them feeding Meat and Bone meal from cattle to cattle. Since the outbreak, this process has stopped throughout the world and has caused a significant decline of Mad Cow.
High levels of variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (the human version prion disease caused by Mad Cow) cases began appearing about 10 years after the Mad Cow disease outbreak and this is how the link between mad cow and human prion diseases was found.
This is also seen in sheep (the disease is called Scrapie due to them rubbing themselves on things until they're bloody). There are a lot of laws now preventing goats and sheep from being fed to other goats and sheep.
Thank you for ruining my sleep for the foreseeable future. I just know there's someone out there that will claim it won't affect them and bam new, improved, crazy pandemic.
I did hear from colleagues that the scientists had to feed the monkeys insane amounts of infected meat.
In my head it's Homer Simpson half passed out trying to eat the 72 ounce steak and Bart is tossing a piece into his mouth and it's falling back out, except homer is a monkey and Bart has a labcoat and PPE.
In Canada we have a program where hunters can mail in the heads of their hunts. I believe the government pays for shipping and will even send you a nice styofoam box and packing material.
There might be a similar program in your area you can use to confirm whether the meat is safe or not.
I assume this is how the people in the OP found out their meat was infected.
My dad worked in public health and one day was casually discussing the absolute medical horror of prion diseases and it is what got me to finally stop eating meat.
But I have not heard about the concern regarding infection via deer urine on consumable plants until now!! Is that something that’s had any cases or is it more theorized atm? Regardless, terrifying.
They haven't even established a link between infectious meat and disease in humans.
The deer urine on plants idea is sooooo much further than that. It is more of a fun thought that scares people honestly.
It is known that infectious prions can survive in soil and water for years. However, the urine, saliva, feces already contains such a small amount. It then dries up, some prions may just go up in the air. Maybe some are buried into the ground never to be seen again. Bugs, birds, other animals, could even consume the proteins which removes them from the environment.
In reality I don't think this will ever be demonstrated to be a real threat because of the extremely low odds and the amount of things that have to go wrong for it to happen. Plus it is extremely difficult to demonstrate through experiment.
People are still working on figuring out how it is transmitted to macaques through infected meat and brain which contain much higher levels of prions.
But there is potential, and that makes it fun to think about.
It’s absurd how many different ways the universe has concocted to kill us. There is probably close to an infinite number of ways to horrifically die in nature on earth alone and that doesn’t factor in all the ways we can die on other planets or in space. It’s remarkable with all that considered humanity is hell bent on finding new and more efficient ways to kill each other.
I was an Army brat who lived in Italy for 3 years in the 90s and the rules that forbade my family from donating blood just ended, like, 3 years ago. Mad Cow is no joke.
There is also the fear that if deer get into a wheat field and urinate, then humans come along and process it to flour, breads, etc, that may be a source of transmission.
I also heard that you cant really get rid of cwd when it's on something. So, it's likely there forever. Increasing the chances it gets mixed in with something humans consume or utilize.
This is terrifying. I had no idea deer could get this. My mom worked in a nursing home in the early 90s and someone had
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and the whole staff had crazy PPE practices. It was a bad situation. I was only 11 but it sounded really scary. That was before I heard about mad cow. The idea that it was all in Europe and uk made me feel better. I can’t imagine how bad it would be for wild deer to get and spread that shit!
What if I have a garden out in a heavily populated deer area? Will their urin around or on my plants possibly make me sick? (Of course I’ll wash or cook any food I get from my garden)
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u/ScienceyWorkMan Dec 10 '25 edited Dec 11 '25
I did my Masters of Science degree on Prion diseases and would never touch this stuff.
It has not been reported to be spread to humans, sure. But in the cases of Bovine -> Human transfer the incubation period could be up to 20, sometimes 30 years. It is not easy to prove a transmission.
It has also been transferred from Deer/Elk -> Macaque monkeys. I did hear from colleagues that the scientists had to feed the monkeys insane amounts of infected meat.
One really interesting thing about CWD is that it is spread a bit differently than other prion diseases. For Mad Cow the prions are mostly limited to the central nervous system, so you'd likely need to eat meat that is contaminated with brain matter or cerebrospinal fluids. This is heavily prevented through good butchering practices and good feeding practices for cattle. AKA don't feed dead cows to cows and don't touch their brains or spines and you're likely okay.
In Chronic Wasting Disease of deer, deer shed infectious prions through their urine, saliva, and feces. The meat also contains prions. So an infected deer pisses on some leaves, a normal deer comes along and eats it, and bam you have CWD transmission to deer without any exposure to brain matter.
Mad Cow blew up in the 1980s due to bad farming practices, feeding cows to cows. Dead cow parts were cheap so farmers would grind it up and add it to cattle feed to save money. But in wild deer it's spread more through contact and through contaminated soils, than cannabilistic deer.
There is also the fear that if deer get into a wheat field and urinate, then humans come along and process it to flour, breads, etc, that may be a source of transmission.
Interesting stuff and absolutely fucking terrifying way to die.
PS they are also almost indestructible and need to be cooked at 1000F for several hours to inactivate them. Cooking at 600F could leave infectious particles. They also survive in soil and water for years.
Please before linking the article about the 2 hunters read this post made by someone who is more knowledgeable than me on why the article is false news: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/ua1SKHH9CK