I’ve seen the research that came to the conclusion that CWD does not infect humans and am not convinced the study was thorough enough. Scrapie went into cattle and deer when the “experts” said it only infected sheep. The safe and smart thing to do is test the deer before consuming it and if it’s positive not eat it. There was a family in Kentucky that developed CJD after eating squirrel brains. It is prudent to be cautious.
Never eat the organs of a harvested deer and debone the roasts.
The research assumes the conversion to a prion is direct, from one prion changing the conformation of normal protein, in isolation. But if there were some other cofactor necessary, like in CWD, maybe a co-infection producing antibodies which facilitated the change, then testing if the prion alone will do it will show it won’t, whereas if it were combined with the unknown cofactor, it would.
They openly say in the paper they don’t know 100% that direct transformation in isolation is the mechanism of disease, then say they tested if it would produce disease, it would not, so therefore it is safe.
I would say the lack of caution in the result is outright malpractice. You have two hunters who ate a CWD deer who got CJD. You’d think they would err on the side of safety.