Zombie deer apocalypse incoming?
25 2018-01-24 by Amazonistrash
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_wasting_disease
Chronic wasting disease is not new, but why all of the sudden are experts worried about it spreading to humans?
Prions are by far the most terrifying pathogen to me. They cant be cooked out, vaccinated against, treated effectively or cured. Human prion diseases are invariably fatal and have years to decades of incubation time and usually kill within weeks to months.
Could there be a weaponization of engineered prions on the horizon? An incurable illness transmitted by biting(really any fluid transfer) that turns peoples' brain into a sponge(hence the term spongiform encephalopathies) sounds like a recipe for a real zombie apocalypse.
15 comments
1 tsudome 2018-01-24
I see my state has the little red dots. I don't hunt anymore (location, lack of land, no point in killing more than my kid and I could eat), but most people I know do.
It's a pretty fucking scary thought.
1 beaver_shots 2018-01-24
You are correct wasting disease has been around. This is just a media fear monger fad. The chances of a human getting sick from consuming deer is very low... even lower is the chance of it spreading from human to human unless people start eating human meat on the regular.
Mad cow in the 90s was the result of feeding cows brains to other cows and over generations of this practice the prions problem built up until it became a potential problem. This cant really happen in while populations.
1 Squirrelboy85 2018-01-24
This. Of the several places that I know of here in MO that process deer, they haven't seen signs of the disease. But those are the places near me.
1 workin_on_a_sponse 2018-01-24
It’s all over Arkansas - hunters are encourage and in some ways recruited to look for and report it
1 Squirrelboy85 2018-01-24
Is it near the Missouri/Arkansas border at all. I don't go down that far to hunt some friends of mine do, but my plot is in Crawford county.
1 workin_on_a_sponse 2018-01-24
I’m more central - many reports coming buffalo river area and north east Arkansas. This year has had less communication but the last two years it was a regular taking point.
1 Squirrelboy85 2018-01-24
Do you think it's because of the weird weather in the Midwest that the disease is easy to catch
1 Tablemonster 2018-01-24
Also, unless you're eating the brain, eyeballs, thyroid, and other endocrine related things....youll be fine. CWD had a huge thing in Wisconsin in 99, 2000. I was a headcutter for the DNR. There were hundreds of thousands of deer culled for testing in the south central part of the state after a breakout. It's much tamer now and back to normal.
1 perfect_pickles 2018-01-24
they 'cured' mad cow by culling beef cattle at a very young age, before any symptoms can be observed.
on a side note, Mike Rowe on one of his dirty jobs shows was working at a US meat rendering factory, they ground a complete skinned cow including head and spine. jaw dropping moment. S4E14
1 beaver_shots 2018-01-24
Yikes I thought they made it illegal to use the heads after the whole mad cow scare back in the day?
1 Amazonistrash 2018-01-24
Not for the livestock humans they feed cheap food to. You know, like public school lunches.
1 perfect_pickles 2018-01-24
the Free Press using AP or Reuters sources claims no danger to humans from CWD in deer.
its like the BSE (staggers in the US) never happened and nobody could guess at it.
1 bigodiel 2018-01-24
Mad Cow disease can have an inoculation of over 10 years. It is worrisome, specially since guidelines have become relaxed since the late nineties scare.
1 Tecumsehs_Revenge 2018-01-24
Zoonotic