HA/KS's Link
"The spiroplasma (bacteria) theory has been around for years, but has recently resurfaced. I’ll lay out the many reasons why prions are implicated in all transmissible spongiform encephalopathy diseases (TSE). No other infectious agent has the same amount of evidence."
This is a pretty decent article and supports the many posts I have made on this subject. I've been a student of prion disease for years and have had communications with several scientists that work in the field of prion diseases.
Would like to add to this article a few comments.
1. Governments have banned the use of downer cattle as a source for protein supplements for cattle as studies of BSE in Great Britain had shown that the prions from a diseased animal are not destroyed in the process of conversion in spite of the process which includes high temperatures.
That said, it is still legal to use that protein supplement source for use in other species such as poultry, fish and hog feed. Unfortunately, protein supplements produced from those species can be fed to cattle.
Think about that when it is known that the abnormal prions are not destroyed during the process of producing protein feed supplements.
2. We all see that standard warning that our game officials make about the transmission of CWD to humans. And it was proven that the BSE prion did cross the specie barrier to humans causing vCJD.
In today's medicine, routine autopsies of the deceased does not occur. Most insurance does not cover the cost. Most autopsies are done these days for two major reasons: medico-legal and grant funded research.
The symptoms of brain diseases such as CJD, dementia, Alzheimer's, MS etc. stretch across a wide variety of identifiers. A patient's diagnosis is therefore dependent upon the skill and expertise of the diagnosing physician whose skills can vary widely. Without actual testing of the brain tissue, many of the diagnoses actually have little laboratory data.
Which poses the question...how do we know for sure that the CWD prion has not crossed the specie barrier? There is some evidence that dosage of prions is a major factor in spreading the disease--especially across the specie barrier. In an infected animal, the prion infection spreads from the gut through the lymphatics and into the spinal cord...eventually demonstrating a sick animal when it spreads in the brain.
One of the interesting facts that came out of the BSE in Great Britain is that diet may have a lot to do with people who ended up with vCJD and dying. Part of the "normal" diet in Great Britain were brains, blood sausages and meats that were rich in prion content of a BSE infected animal...lymph nodes, bone marrow, nervous and brain tissue.
CWD can probably (and may well have) infected humans. However, few of us are fortunate to have venison on our tables as a daily meal. Nor do many people harvest brain from their kills. A few simple measures can lessen those chances:
1. Wear gloves when dressing out an animal.
2. Debone the deer rather than cutting through the marrow with a bandsaw.
3. Avoid eating the highly lymphatic tissues such as the liver (and I have a great recipe for venison liver pate) and spleen.
4. Forego using deer brains for tanning.
