CWD evolving to affect humans?

Eric Dellamater

Eric Dellamater

Well-known member
http://www.jsonline.com/features/health/115246649.html

this article along with the associated research that is came from pose some interesting ideas of the prions jumping ship and mutating successfully to infect possibly humans. Just wondering what you all think of this, both the article and the original paper (they link it in the article). I know we have more than a few bio guys and scientists. Thoughts?

Seems to me this has been out west for over 30 years with no signs of evolution, makes me wonder to the accuracy of this claim. Also, they talk about genetically altered mice which have human prions and they are testing them but it will not be out for 1-2 years.
 
This may not be new. My observations are completely unscientific but I can assure you that I have come across lots of chronically wasted human beings in the past.

On a more serious note, the impact of CWD should be a concern for all of us. Species jumping in animal disease is nothing new and may just be a matter of time in this case. I just had a chat about this with a friend of mine who is a field agent for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. She is responsible for inspecting all livestock and captive exotic animals in her work area and routinely samples brain tissue from hundreds of dead stock animals a year monitoring for this, BSE and other diseases. Incidentally, she spends a good part of each year working on bird flu issues, another animal disease of concern to this group.

A few years back I lost a colleague and friend to CJD, another of the prion diseases. The progress of her illness was unbelievably fast. It seemed like we had just been golfing and we were saying goodbye about 2 months later.
 
This may not be new. My observations are completely unscientific but I can assure you that I have come across lots of chronically wasted human beings in the past.
Click to expand...

You should come to work with me someday and see what "wasted human beings" is all about.

CWD, BSE, H1N1, West nile, Lime disease .... on and on it goes. I think a lot of media hype goes a long with the NEW stuff that comes out, the big story.
40 thousand people a year die from regular type A,B flu and no body bats a eye at that.

Oh ya, I am a work crew supervisor and I work in very secure setting, you could say I have a captive workforce.
 
Whenever I see a scientist saying "may", "could" or "might" the first thing I think of is that they are trying to ensure funding. These things "have", "did" or "didn't" for millennia and they will continue in the future. CWD "could" mutate next year, in 500 years or most likely never. They can't say for sure but if they want funding it better sound like it is getting close. I'm almost more afraid of work being done to see if it can mutate.
I'd rather see them work on ways to protect animals it is already in and work on the ones that already effect humans. There are already these type of diseases in humans but they don't create the buzz CWD and Mad Cow does.

I don't think it just showed up either. 100 years ago there were very few deer so a few dying of CWD aren't noticed. You get rid of all the predators and increase the population you start to notice them.

If we are going to worry about every "might happen" out there we better start working on a giant space lazer to shoot down the next asteroid that will hit earth in the next few million years.

Well thats my opinion anyways.
Tim
 
I agree Tim, there is nothing new in the article. There still has been no direct link to humans and may never be.

When I die check out my brain because I have eaten elk that had tested positive for CWD - I think 7-10 years ago. I can't remember just when it was and that is likely a factor of my age rather than CWD.
 
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