"Prion disease found lurking in deer muscle,"...it's lurking, well I guess I had better worry
The infectious prions that cause Chronic Wasting Disease, an infection similar to BSE that afflicts North American deer and elk have been found in the parts of the animals that people eat. No one knows if CWD can jump to humans, but if it does hunters in affected areas might be at risk.CWD was first diagnosed as a spongiform encephalopathy in captive deer and elk in Colorado in the 1970s, and in wild deer and elk in the region in the 1980s. But in the 1990s it spread widely within the elk farming industry, jumped to wild deer, and now affects two provinces of Canada and 13 US states.
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The team replaced the gene for the normal mouse version of the prion protein with the normal gene from deer, so the mice made the normal, healthy deer protein. They then injected the mouse brains with tissue from infected deer. Twelve to 18 months later, the mice developed encephalopathy.
Tissues from both the infected deers' brains and thigh muscle caused disease. Muscle took slightly longer to cause disease than brain tissue, showing it had slightly less prion.
“We don’t know that it is transmitted in the wild by animals eating muscle from infected animals,” cautions Telling. “We now have to see where else the prion might be,” including saliva and even excrement, using more transgenic mice.
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“If I were a hunter I would be cautious about eating deer in areas affected,” says Telling. But he notes that not much testing of wildlife has been done, and it is not clear how prevalent the infection is.
That is scary. So what you are saying is that if I genetically modify myself so that I express a deer protein, and then inject deer muscle into my brain I could die. I better change my lifestyle.
Your chances of getting mad cow disease are literally a bagillion to one. You have a better chance of being mauled to death by a rabid mime that dying of mad cow disease much less mad deer disease. So I am going to be honest, if I were a hunter I would pay no attention to this article whatsoever.
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