Posted on 02/13/2019 1:58:57 PM PST by blam
A deadly disease that has affected the deer population in an estimated 24 states and two Canadian provinces could eventually spread to and infect humans, experts warn.
Experts from the University of Minnesota told lawmakers of the dangers of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), or what the U.S. Geological Survey describes as a “ fatal, neurological illness occurring in North American cervids (members of the deer family), including white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, and moose.”
Currently, there are no vaccines or treatments available for the disease, which scientists say spreads directly through animal-to-animal contact but also indirectly through contaminated drinking water or food.
While there have been no reported cases of CWD in people, Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told lawmakers that the disease should be treated as a public health issue, claiming human cases of CWD will likely be “documented in the years ahead.”
“It is probable that human cases of CWD associated with the consumption of contaminated meat will be documented in the years ahead. It is possible that number of human cases will be substantial and will not be isolated events,” he said, in part, according to the Twin Cities Pioneer Press. .
Osterholm likened CWD to mad cow disease, which public health officials and those in the beef industry once did not think could infect people (it has since been confirmed that a cureless variant of mad cow — Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) — can adversely impact humans). CWD and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease belong to the same family of diseases known as prion diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“If Stephen King could write an infectious disease novel, he would write about prions like this." — Michael Osterholm
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Prions have been around for decades. Found in sheep, cows, deer, camels, elk, cats and ostrich. From what I remember from school, don’t eat these animals brains. (Damn!)
There is form in humans called Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. Although some cases have been theorized to be inherited, cannibals are at high risk.
I’m not too worried about this.
I fear the disease in Tennessee is out of control. I suspect that a deer camp located at the county line of Fayette/Hardeman brought in the contaminated deer because the positives in Tennessee radiate from that location and spread out. That is my hypothesis.
And it’s possible there could be a rash of hot 35 year olds who want to jump my bones. And my wife would say that’s cool go ahead and do it.
Now back to our regularly scheduled program in the real world.
“And it’s possible there could be a rash of hot 35 year olds who want to jump my bones. And my wife would say that’s cool go ahead and do it.”
Forgot RBG.
This is not new news.......
What meat will you eat?
"The term 'prion' was coined by Stanley B. Prusiner of the University of California School of Medicine at San Francisco in 1982 to distinguish the infectious agent that causes scrapie in sheep, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle from other, more typical infectious agents. The prion hypothesis postulates that these diseases are caused not by a conventional virus or bacterium but by a protein that has adopted an abnormal form."
I read in the local paper this past week about two Alabama hunters ticketed because they were caught bringing two dead dear across the state line from Mississippi to Alabama.
Haven't you noticed that every cow in this country that provides food or milk has a number attached to it's ear. Every cow I see everywhere around here has that number thing on their ear.
This disease has not spread to humans because the state DNRs and conservation people have done an excellent job of educating hunters about CWD.
The other thing that works in our favor is the symptoms of the disease are unmistakable. The deer become so emaciated and weakly that no hunter would want to shoot one except to possibly put it out of it's misery.
CWD is the poster child for licensed big game hunting and good game management. Preventing overcrowding by selective culling (though big game hunting limits based on monitoring of herd populations) eliminates the threat.
You get hunters to pay for the privilege of keeping your deer population healthy.
Win-Win.
Earlier thread. From the panic you wouldn't know this is a decades old issue, dates to the 60s, Kind of like global warming, soon to morph back to the global cooling fears of the 70s.
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