There's only one study I know of that has been done. It was based upon the occurrence of brain diseases in people who live and farm bordering the south Platte River in Colorado. This has been a hot spot for cwd since it was found here. The people who live in and farm on this area have a long tradition of hunting for and consuming deer here. The occurrence of brain disease among those people over a 20 year period should the rate of occurrence to be no different than the rate across the US.
The human form of the prion disease is called Creutzfeldt Jacob disease. It seems to be spontaneous. It's not CWD. The immune system is responsible for clearing folded proteins. Some think that CJD is not uncommon but healthy immune systems clear it.
There's plenty of information available about CWD and CJD. When you encounter claims of human CWD, look hard at the source and the actual evidence.
You have some real good information and points here.
You are right to suggest that people look carefully at sources for actual evidence. Most don't, we just stop at the first thing we see or when we are told something we WANT to hear, Let's not let a little thing like evidence and fact get in the way.
However, on this topic the real issue is below:
Here is the article's given title:
Fears Deadly Deer Disease Could Infect Humans
Here's an alternate title that conveys the same information without the sensationalism:
Scientists Investigate If Deer Disease Could Spread to Humans
There should be interest in CWD for two good reasons:
One: Do you want deer herds to continue to exist? It is spreading, the reason is unknown. If left "unchecked" what will happen to cervidae as a whole?
No one knows, but maybe finding out might be good.
Two: Is there a
possibility it could spread to Humans?
There are five different "prion" diseases that we currently know of:
Scrapie in sheep,
CWD in deer,
BSE or mad cow disease in bovines
, CJD and
Kuru or TSE in humans. No one knows where they come from, we do know that kuru has been around for a while. Some believe they are spontaneous immune responses but till the outbreak of mad cow disease no one gave them much thought. Why? you ask, because these types of diseases
were not supposed to be transmittable from one species to the next. OOPS. CJD was thought to be a non transmittable spontaneous event. TSE stands for Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies, which is contagious in humans, but along came
BSE and the game changed. So the question of if the CWD
MIGHT at sometime in the future transfer to humans is indeed a very good one because we have two of these diseases that do cause infection in humans, are pretty much 100% fatal, and it ain't an easy way to go, one of which was not supposed to cause disease in you and I.
Interesting, as Ötzi, the copper-age mummy found in the Alps, reportedly had Lyme disease. I wonder if the current version is a relative, and not the same as the strain in him?
To the best of the ability of science today, It is extremely possible Ötzi had Lyme Disease. The disease is not a Lab Escapie, it has been around for a long while, but as science progresses the ability to discover, isolate and treat them improves. The bacterial DNA for
Borrelia burgdorferi was discovered when they sequenced his DNA, it was posited that this was the reason for his tattoo's, which were surmised to be medical in nature due to their shape and locations.
I hadn't heard that. Wonder if a comparison of the present form and Otzi form could be done? OTOH, the natural evolution of the virus could make that difficult.
Lyme Disease is caused by a
Bacteria not a virus nor, for that matter, a prion. The bactieriae are collectively called
Borrelia Burgdorferi sensu Lato: there are multiple different strains throughout the world. Since the disease was discover in Ötzi by DNA sequencing and not by microscopic examination we can safely say that it is the same disease.
Borrelia is a spirochete disease like syphilis and a host of other diseases. Well, that's my washers worth,
and I know you don't really care much for it, do you?
but it is just my broken Hallelujah
I am, with apologies to Leonard,
Mad Michael.
