"Chronic Wasting Disease: The Brain Sickness Turning" Topic

… Deer Into Zombies That Could Transmit To Humans.

"When you hear about zombie deer, you might think you're being pitched a script for a new horror movie — but the phenomenon is all too real. The fact is that zombie deer disease — or Chronic Wasting Disease — is very real and may even pose a threat to humans.

The textbook name for the degenerative disease affecting deer, elk, moose, and even reindeer, is Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). It's a fatal, neurological illness that occurs when a malformed brain protein begins to kill off normal neurons. As brain function deteriorates, an afflicted body can become listless, confused, being drooling, lose weight, and sometimes become aggressive. In short, it kind of makes the afflicted body act like a zombie…"
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Amicalement
Armand

You've linked to this before. This is a prion induced spongiform encephalopy disease similar to Creutzfeld-Jakob in humans, Scrapie in sheep and BSE in cows (Mad Cow Disease). I remember discussing the disease in Reindeer with GunFreak. (Where is he, by the way?)

There are several areas in Colorado where any deer taken by hunters are required to be tested.

Insofar as transmission to humans or others consuming infested deer, no cases have been found to date.

And that raises the question as to whether any of the agencies involved with the problem have looked at predators in the areas of infection to see if there has been cross species transmission.

From the CDC:

link

I've been in jail.

Except for mad cow, I don't think there has been any confirmed cases of other animal prion diseases going over to humans.
Scrape happens from time to time and did so long before and after the British mad cow scare.

My unproven though is that mad cow was somewhat unique as it was a very human made thing. Feeding cows bone from infected cows might have created a more virulent version of mad cow that could easier transmit to humans then what a more natural prion disease would.

I cannot donate blood since I was stationed in Germany back in the 1980's.

Reason:

Mad Cow Disease

Just might have been in some of the beef that I ate nearly 35 years ago.

Really! don't you think I would have noticed by now.

Really! don't you think I would have noticed by now.

We've noticed.

Just kidding. First, you won't get Mad Cow disease by eating BSE tainted cow meat. However, you have a small chance of getting a variant of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, which is our version of spongiform encephalopathy. That's the bad news.

The good news is that it is extremely rare. More importantly, the time frame of transmission to the time of showing manifestations of vCJD is very long…..up to 15 years. This means that you are way, way beyond the latency period. I'd say you are fine.

Amazing the Red Cross hasn't kept up with this. Have you tried to give blood recently?

I was in England when mad cow was at it's worst there.
As a teenager, (I was only 11 and 12 when I was there) I did think that it would be years before I knew if I had caught it. And being a hobby hypochondriac, it did bother me. Now some 21-22 years later, I think I'm probably safe.