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Investigating Chronic Wasting Disease
windows writes "The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch has an article in today's newspaper on efforts by many states to test for chronic wasting disease. The disease affects deer and elk, and is similar to Mad Cow Disease in how it destroys brain tissue giving it a spony appearance under a microscope. Due to the rapid spread of the disease recently, most states are enlisting the assistance of hunters to provide brain stems of deer, to test for the disease. The purpose of this study is just to determine how far geographically the disease has spread. It is not yet understood how the disease is spread or if it is a threat to cattle or humans."
Chronic Wasting Diseases Investigate You!
I wasted my share of chronic... I never thought it was a disease!!!
They don't know how it's spread or if it will hurt me, but I shouldn't worry about handling items possibly contaminated with the disease? Makes sense...
--It's Pimptastic!--
None care about them. But if this disease gets spread over cattle and humans, so it's a disaster
..I thought I was wasting away because I sit inside reading Slashdot on lovely sunny Sunday afternoons.
This just in: researchers have found symptoms of Chronic Wasting Disease in various Slashdot editors. Details at 11.
Spony isn't in the dictionary......so what is something that appears spony?
"...most states are enlisting the assistance of hunters to provide brain stems of deer, to test for the disease."
Now the rednecks and hillbillies will have a government approved reason for hunting defenseless animals for entertainment.
This wouldn't happen IN SOVIET RUSSIA. IN SOVIET RUSSIA, THE STATE HUNTS YOU!
Actually, I suppose it would. IN SOVIET RUSSIA, they probably hunted endangered species for shits and giggles.
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
Of course they could always mount the head on the wall, then one day while they are standing under it the nail lets loose and the antlers of the trophy runs through their neck.
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
Perhaps one of my favorite SF writers, Bruce Sterling, was closer than I thought...
In "Sacred Cow" he postulated that there was a slower, more insidious form of BSE which only affected humans after decades... Resulting in >80% death tolls in Britain, >60% in the rest of Europe. 50% in the US. 20% in Japan. A modern black plague.
The western world collapses, India, Japan and China rise to control the world.
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
We are too effectively battling disease nowdays, so it's targeting animals instead. Good, let the bastards rot. Besides that the deer population is actually higher than it's ever been. They can afford to lose a few.
Buy gun
Go hunting
Shoot deer
Eat deer
Die a slow lingering death from prions
Profit the human race!
I'm chronically wasted. Does this mean they're gonna have to shoot me and test my brain stem. Geez, I hope not. Or, if it has to happen, I hope they do it when I'm really, really wasted. That way I won't feel it. Just an idea. Dude.
Yet there is a story about disease in deer.
Good job, Slashdot. Good job.
They know it's carried in the brain and tissue of the spinal cord. If you don't cut into the brain or spinal cord when butchering the animals, you have nothing to worry about. You can handle all the meat from the animals that you want with no effects to you at all.
So how does it spread, then? The elks rub their brain stems together in the throws of passion?
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
Doh! I changed Egan for Sterling in the text but not in the subject... Time for bed...
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
As mentioned in the article, CWD has recently been found in Wisconsin. It's been all over the news here. Hunter turnout is down 20%, I believe.
Here's one article from the local paper.
Deer hunting is the best way to keep the herds thin and help prevent the spread of disease.
Some bunny-huggers out there think they are doing the deer a favor by trying to stop hunting and implementing deer-transfers from heavily human-populated areas, when they may, in fact, be contributing to the problem.
In Missouri, hunters take about 225,000 deer a year out of about 1 million or so. This taking of about one quarter of the herd has helped keep the numbers fairly steady. This steady hunting pressure keeps the herd at sustainable numbers in most areas.
The areas in MO that have the worst deer population problems are around the big cities (St Louis, Kansas City, and Jefferson City). People are constantly running into them with their cars in the suburbs. The conservation department tries to encourage bow hunting around these areas by selling up to 5 $5 "urban archery" permits per hunter. But it's hard to hunt (even bow hunt) where people are too close by, because a lot of city-folks seem to have a negative attitude towards hunting.
dochood
MO Deer Hunter
Before I read the summary, a scene from a simpsons episode entered my head.
TV reporter : "Coming up next, a new fad that is sweeping the nation, wasting food!"
Shot of man holding a cooked turkey throwing it in the trash, and then opening a carton of milk and slowly pouring it into the trashcan.
Imagine that, the government finally came up with a program encouraging people to give head.
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
"[CRW] is similar to Mad Cow Disease in how it destroys brain tissue giving it a spony appearance under a microscope."
This just in: researchers have found symptoms of Chronic Wasting Disease in various Slashdot editors. Details at 11.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's supposed to be News for Nerds, not News for Herds.
News for HURDs
Tellah: You spoony Bard!
--
It affects the nerve tissue, not necessarily just the central nervous system, and nerves pervade the body. Also, while it only seems to affect nerves, that doesn't mean that a virus or prion that causes it isn't present in other body tissue.
Who knows, if this disease spreads slowly enough, and reaches a point of equilibrium, it may very well turn out to be to the deer's a benefit.
As any financial advisor can tell you, humans are by nature a risk-averse species. As the above quote illustrates, fears of brain-eating prions in deer could mean the end of the deer-hunting industry, freeing the deer from the scourge of rifle-toting primates at the price of a handful of scrappie deaths each year.
Could it be that natural selection has finally discovered a way to human-proof a nonhuman species?
Some people might not understand that CWD can/is a threat since it is not found in humans and we're not sure if it can spread to cattle and humans. CWD is serious since it is going to require time and money to understand the disease. And, without much understanding, hunting license sales are down and less money that could be used for research is not being spent. We NEED to know what this disease really is and what its possible consequneces to humans and other animals might be. If this disease goes unchecked, what are we going to say when it's too late and humans and cattle get it?? Supposedly, when it was discoverd, mad cow disease wasn't able to spread to humans, yet it's now known that it does...and how do we know that CWD won't spread to humans if the research isn't done, and people are misinformed or uninformed on the issue. Yes, this is important, and the best for all hunters to do is to continue to buy licenses, participate in hunts to erradicate diseased areas, and to do anything they can to help. This disease is critical to the future of people and to the states we live in.
Depends,
are you gonna start feeding deer heads to cattle?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
So instead of trying to provide some insightful comment built on reason, i'll just go imaginitive and see what I come up with...
/end joke
I'm guessing that the problem occurs first in domestic livestock then moves it's way down to the wild population. This is a great agurment for natural selection VS. controlled breeding, gene manipulation and cloning.
For whatever reason, us humans have the gall to think we can master in 20 years what took nature millions of years to perfect. Despite natural selection being cruel in both the animal world and human (small geeks get beat up/eat up by jocks) just the fact that it has worked over eons is proof alone that it is far better than any technology we as humans can develop.
I used to tell this story when I got drunk to people, it's funny so laugh..
Why alchohol makes you smarter.
Your brain is like a herd of buffalo. The process of natural selection makes the herd healthier because the wolves will kill the slower buffalo trailing the herd first. By killing off the sick and weak buffalo the herd is left with healthy stock to breed, thus introducing healthier buffalo's into the herd.
Your brain is like that hurd of buffalo when you drink. The alchahol kills off the slow and weak brain cells leaving only the healthy ones to reproduce, thereby making your brain a faster more efficient machine. This is why everybody feels a little stronger when drinking!
That little joke does have grounding in reality in that the domesticated animals were not bred for diesease resistance or agressiveness, but rather for docileness and meat. This in turn has made them more susceptable to dieseases that their wild cousins would normally laugh off.
Add to that equation the use of antibiotics and steroids in domestic livestock. It's been proven with humans that over time a diesease will mutate where it is no longer killed by an antibody. We then change it a bit, and the diesease mutates yet again. Steroids inhibit the production of white blood cells while strengthening muscles. Steroids don't kill the germ, they just make you feel like you have none. So germs can keep on breeding inside an organism all jacked up on steroids and it wouldn't even know it.
The hugely scarey thing is humans are now *considering* tweaking with our own genes, and despite that 3lb's of grey stuff we got on top of our heads, unless we irraditate the earth (in which case we ruin it) there is no way we are going to be able to stop the googleplex of 1 celled organisms that inhabit this earth from overthrowing us.
I guess the moral i'd like to make to all this is we need to "re-teach" ourselves to live in harmony with nature. Just because you destroy a forest, pave it, and put pavement over it doesn't mean you "conquered" nature. If it's not there how can you say it was conquered??
Just my 2cents.
I live in Western Nebraska (Crawford) and we just went through deer season here. What a mess! After reading this article and what I have alread learned it's apparent that trasmission of this disease is not well know and is still potentially dangerous to humans. I for one will not buy meat from packing houses that pack wild game and additional will not hunt anything and eat it.
if you'd read anything or listen to anything, the disease is not found in the meat, even though the meat is filled with nerves....
The parts that ought to frighten you don't necessarily seem that bad until all of the factors are taken in at once:
1) total incurability of infected people/animals.
2) near indestructability of prions (1100F for hours, etc.)
3) ability of TSE's to cross species (scrapie in sheep, BSE in cattle, CJD in people, TME in mink, PSE in pigs, etc.) and it's all the same group of diseases. They differ in the speed that they cause damage, but that's about it.
4) The US meat/poultry industry practice of rendering slaughterhouse remains and *DOWNER CATTLE* into feed for other animals and poultry. This rendering process always includes brain and spinal cord tissue in the resulting product.
Basically, if the US meat industry hasn't found BSE in cattle, it's because it doesn't want to. The fact that downer cattle are never checked for BSE should piss just about everyone off. When Dr. Richard Marsh at the University of Wisconsin injected US cattle with TME infected US mink tissues, the cattle didn't act like the British cattle, they simply collapsed, looking like any other downer cow.
The US industry takes those downer cows, never checks to see what might have brought them down, grinds them up, brains and all, and feeds them to chickens, pigs, other cattle.
The scariest part is that slower forms of CJD (the human disease) look exactly like Alzheimer's and other forms of progressive dementia. In a Yale study, 6 of 46 Alzheimer's patients (13%!) were CJD positive at autopsy.
CWD (deer, elk, etc.) is almost certainly picked up from raiding contaminated feed meant for livestock. At least, that's my marginally informed position on the topic. It has to be injested somehow and it's a distorted animal protien so these wild herbivorous animals have to be consuming animal proteins to get sick.
The European Union has now banned all animal products in livestock feed, but the US FDA resists this simple and absolutely necessary step to halt the progress of the perfect pathogen throughout the United States.
An article that does a much better job of describing these problems and substantiating these arguments is at: "mad cows and englishmen". I hope it worries you and that you tell someone else about it. Even better, tell your congresscritter about it and what you think about it.
Regards, Ross
I recommend this link for a good discussion of prionic proteins and how they relate to CWD and similar illnesses.
This is a decent article that addresses how to clean a deer with caution and respect to CWD:
Cut with Caution: How to safely field dress deer
Comment removed based on user account deletion
the posters right, we have to many deer running into cars, and hunting accidents get rednecks outa the gene pool
To think, just a few years ago, that sentence would have stopped at "shot it". Now after shooting it, we send it's head to Galesburg. Civilization has come a long way.
Sex - Find It
"most states are enlisting the assistance of hunters to provide brain stems of deer, to test for the disease. The purpose of this study is just to determine how far geographically the disease has spread. It is not yet understood how the disease is spread or if it is a threat to cattle or humans.
What they failed to mention is that by having the hunters collect the stem cells they can also find out if it's a threat to humans. Good thinking!
Please mod this guy up. This is the most informative thing I've read on this subject in a long time.
Huh?
Interesting that this is a story today, because yesterday a group of Canadian elk ranchers announced a class action suit against the Canadian gov't for failing to take action against the spread of CWD. More details are here.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
WI DNR site has a FAQ and other info on CDW here
Jesus Fucking Christ.
Did you learn how to spell from Rob Malda ?
Yeah, it's a typo. As in "SponeBob". But before I read the article I did spend a couple fruitless minutes trying to look it up elsewhere on the internet, in a weird spinoff of RTFM. [Slaps forehead]
n/t
I was eating my steak, and it was like, "moo," "moo," and then it was, like, half of my brain stem was gone.
And I was like: "Huh?"
It devoured my brain.
It was really a good brain.
It was kind of a... bummer.
Seriously... give this a consideration.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
Yeah that's right. Let's build a better bovine. One that's immune to this shit. And anyone who wants to take their chances out in the woods with fuzzy wuzzies and eating pine nuts can have at it. Just so long as they don't breed or breathe near me.
How can state governments test for Chronic Wasting Disease... I thought most state governments suffered from it!
I spent some time last summer wandering around Walmart stores in Eastern Kentucky last summer, and I can tell you, poor Americans don't need any more meat, or anything else to eat.
I've spent time in poor Asian countries in my day, and I can assure you - really poor people don't weigh three hundred pounds.
I'm not that old, but I can remember when hillbillies were skinny. Times change.
I bragged about my Karma at a job interview but I didn't get the job.
On thursday for hors-duervs my uncle, who bowhunts, real hunting IMO, brought a big hommade venison summer sausage. Even though it was from last years hunt, almost no one touched it. This is really scary stuff, especially since its on the front page of every paper here in wisonsin almost every day.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
AIDS isn't as big of a deal as many other diseases in America. The biggest killer in the U.S. is still heart disease. In this country, it is largely a gay male's disease (woo hoo, that'll get me flamed), and even in that demographic it hasn't caused the kind of decimation it has in demographics like, oh, the whole of South Africa.
Like it or not, the U.S. remains extremely egocentric. This is Slashdot, not the BBC.
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara
hippies piss me off, they say they want to save the earth, but all they do is smoke pot and smell badsave a plant, eat a cow
I almost went vegetarian. Man, that could have sucked.
Wisconisn sure does, our state deficit last year was something like $6bil, so now we dont have the cash to research this stuff.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
start feeding deer heads to cattle?
I'm pretty sure that this has happened already. Seeing as animal byproducts are already used as nutritional filler for livestock. All it would take is a farmer to go hunting, bag and cut his deer, then send off the non-edibles to a byproduct processor (Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies {TSE's} are really hard to get rid of).
Now all we have to do is wait for the end result.
You're completely detached from the real world.
So where can I pick up my Trojan Deer Condoms?
Perhaps you ought to take a look at what the rules are on animal feed in the United States. Amongst other things, a cow can be fed food scraps of animal protein - yet cooking does not destory prions, as many people in Europe can tell you.
The University of Wisconsin is doing some pretty major research on this topic, and I believe it to be leading research in the field right now. The central location for public information on the topic at the UW is here.
Out of order?! Fuck, even in the future nothing works...
"[CRW] is similar to Mad Cow Disease in how it destroys brain tissue giving it a spony appearance under a microscope."
This just in: researchers have found symptoms of Chronic Wasting Disease in various Slashdot editors. Details at 11.
Hey Meat Muncher,
Not all of us eat cattle. In case you werent aware there is a fairly large contingent of humans who dont eat meat. We like to call ourselves Vegitarians. If you are worried about CWD, dont eat meat. If you dont eat meat, you will never get this disease.
The only way for a vegitarian to injest a prion is if the ashes from a diseased animal were used to fertilize a field and some of the fertilizer were to stick to the vegitable or fruit. The chances a prion will be sticking to your strawberry are highly unlikely, and it would have happened to you if you were a meat eater anyway.
I usually dont preach about vegitarianism, but this kid seems to be really frickin scared of the disease and believes everyone eats cattle.
Kick the McDiet.
Another possibility I don't think anyone's really looked at is infection by contact with blood. Elk are huge, powerful animals: a big bull elk can weigh over half a ton. They scrape their antlers against trees to remove the velvet and I've seen scrapes start at a foot off the ground and extend to probably eight feet. Hell there's one in a place I go hunting that likes to snap 2 inch diameter trees in half with his antlers. Anyway, when they fight during the rut there's the potential for massive and even fatal injuries. It doesn't seem too far out of line that it could be transfered from one infected but early symptom bull to a healthy bull through their injuries.
Maybe because Taco is a homophobe who lives four streets over from his mother in Holland, Michigan.
And both diseases (okay, AIDS is virus) are caused by lifestyle choices. Do you want to eat meat? Risk getting CJD. Want to fuck monkeys, men, or loose women, all of whom may have shared a needle (well, maybe not the monkey... yet)? Risk getting AIDS.
Want to avoid getting killed by eating meat? Uh, that is, animal (food) meat: Don't eat meat! Irradiation and cooking (below 1800F) isn't going to kill prion diseases (yes, 1800F). These wasting diseases can only be abated by changing the way that we feed and slaughter animals. It's not in the corporate ($$$) or political ($) interest to do this.
Want to avoid getting killed by a formerly gays-only disease (remember health class: "Got AIDS Yet")? Don't fuck people you don't know so well. Condoms aren't effective enough. Latex condoms are riddled with voids about 3-10x larger than the HIV virus. They're about 85-90% effective barrier if you're fucking a WASP (stone cold corpse bitch filing her nails while you ram her doggy style), that reliability goes down pretty quickly the more "stressed" the latex gets.
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
Sing it, my brother! Those fucking al-Queda, suicide bomber, and terrorist lovers should be destroyed along with the Republicans who support our "friendship" with the Saudi murderers. The blood of everyone killed on 9/11 lies squarely on the Saudis who funded the terrorists, and on the Bush administration (oil men) that supports the Saudis, and on GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota and whoever makes or buys gas guzzling SUVs that keep the terrorist funders (the Saudis) rich.
I know, I shouldn't feed the trolls. But some people seriously have that sort of knee-jerk reaction: That is, they see someone say "it's a gay disease", and they throw up their arms and declare the person a bigot. Unfortunately, it's the way things are.
If you had looked at the statistics on the page I linked, you'd notice that, through June 2001, in the U.S., of the total 807074 people reported with AIDS or HIV, 368971 of those likely were exposed under the category "men who have sex with men". That's 45%. A quarter of that were exposed through heterosexual contact.
Now, as to the credibility of those statistics, on the same page:
If you don't inject drugs and aren't a gay male, AIDS likely shouldn't be as big a worry as, say, hepatitis might be.
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara
The University of Wisconsin is doing some pretty major research...
Given the quality of their veterinary school and the proximity of the UW to the state health lab, I'm sure the UW will make major progress on this.
Meanwhile in Michigan, hunters are worried about a CWD outbreak along with a not yet controlled outbreak of bovine TB. In years past hunters have been asked to stop at DNR check stations and leave their deer heads for examination for TB. I did not see any of these stops on southbound I-75 this year.
While this might be funny, it is physically impossible for their brain stems to rub together unless their entire skull is open.
For the facts though, it is not fully certain that prions are found only in the nervous system. There has been thought that excrement or saliva may carry some. It is hard to track though, when you are not fully certain what it is that you are tracking.
While I agree that AIDs day is important to cover, CWD, MadCow, and CJD are almost certainly the same thing. These will be the next big epidemic. BTW, I mention in a later posting about working at CDC in 1980-81. At that time the raygun was busy wanking off about Herpes and Other minor VD. Had he given the 2 million that was asked for by the CDC, for tracking the infected ppl of that time, the current US infection rate would be somewhere between 1/2 to 1/100 of the current rate.
While Raygun screwed US back then, there is no going back. Right now, we can do something about CWD and if we do nothing, then, I suspect, this will be as bad as AIDs.
There's one minor flaw in your alcohol story. Neurons don't reproduce! If they did, we wouldn't have stupid people!
You are all fartheads.
There's a lot of evidence that our "natural" diet is composed of a large percentage of animal protien, upwards of 60%. We don't have the bone structure or jaw muscles to be true herbavores, and large brains are found mostly (always?) in predators, since they have the caloric intake to support them.
Additionally, there are present-day cultures, such as the Inuit, who get about 95% of thier calories from animal products, without bad health effects. Their high-protien diets are offset by a high-activity lifestyle, and by eating leaner meat that is the usual fare in many other places.
This month's Scientific American has a very interesting article about homonid diet. You may want to check it out.
Perhaps you should look at your own links to animal feed rules! Yes, cattle can be fed animal protien, but not animal protien derived from ruminents. (These include deer, cattle, buffalo, etc, etc.) So, no deer parts are being fed to cattle.
People are more violently opposed to fur than leather
because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Oh I just picked the most tried and tested method.
I'm sure you could come up with more ingeneous ways than eating brains, but hey, eating brains makes you smarter!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I think that any statement to the effect that
"The official rule is that blarg is not allowed therefore blarg does not happen (on any large or widespread scale)"
should, for any given blarg, be taken with a large pinch of salt (or whatever other white powder you choose).
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Warning, do not panic over CWD. That isn't to say don't worry about it, because it is potentially serious. However it is not something to panic about.
CWD has been known for 30 years in elk. Someone needed a story for a slow news week. Because of the story people start worring, and getting meat that would not have been tested before tested. Suddenly we find it all over, and conclude it is spreading like wildfire. However there was never a widespread study of where CWD is before this year, so it is incorrect to say it is spreading. Many experts belive (Note, they all admit we know little about this) that it has been everywhere for years. Other experts think that it is spreading. However we do not know.
The key point is we know very little about it. What we do know is bad, but that isn't much. Enough to insite the idiotic masses into panic, but I like to believe the /. readership is smarter than that. Take reasonable precautions, and go on with life.
A deer can now get shot simply for acting strangely?
Yeah, Al Kieda, that notirous terrorist guy has spiked the food chain with horrible prions that will kill all the non Islamics!
But all is not lost -- since these prions are such resiliant substances, maybe we can build jet engines out of them and bomb stupid old Al out of existance.
In other news, doctors have reported a huge increase in the number of people now qualified to seek a presidential candidacy or Senate seat.
They're putting this down to a brain wasting disease too.
Like, say, Alzheimer's disease?
AIDS likely shouldn't be as big a worry [hepatitis-central.com] as, say, hepatitis might be.
Agreed. My wife works for the state health department, and she says some days it seems half of the people she talks to have Hepatitis! Their office has yet to handle a case for a person with AIDS.
They do it for food? By the time you add up the costs of gear, guns, gas and, of course, the beer the average hunter could've driven to any supermarket and bought 10 times as much meat as they get by hunting.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
http://www.jsonline.com/news/State/jul02/60546.asp
As previous posts have mentioned, prions are nearly indistructible. Multiple cases of human CJD have been proved to be transmitted by surgical instruments that were 'sterilized' by standard techniques after being used on a patient later diagnosed with CJD. My point is: we are well advised to be extremely cautious where potential transmission of prions is at issue.
The previous post regarding 46 brain biopsies of Alzheimer's patients, among which 6 cases were 'positive for CJD' is puzzling. The microscopic look of the two diseases is completely different. CJD brain tissue looks like Swiss cheese under the microscope, while Alzheimer's brains show neurons replaced by 'neurofibrillary tangles.' These look like bits of brown stringy stuff where the neuron body used to be. Clinically, however, the diseases both cause dementia. Normally the time course of CJD, from first symptom to complete dementia, is much shorter (weeks to months) than Alzheimer's (years).
Hope this gives people some things to think about.
Marcus
I agree that people screwed things up by eliminating deer's natural predators because Farmer Fred was pissed about losing a few sheep. The problem with hunters though is that they go after the biggest and strongest animals instead of the weak or sick like natural predators do. I figure after a few hundred years of this kind of hunting deer will be the size of dogs and have stubby little antlers.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
If you can afford all that hunting gear you can afford to go to the market and buy food for your family. This is a bogus argument.
- http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98sep/madcow.ht
m
Since I read it a few years back I've been chopping my own meat in a Kitchenaid grinder attachment for my mixer.It is time to legalize the hunting of people (a certain person didn't wait for it to be legalized in the DC area though). Here are some reasons:
1. Rampant overpopulation with some herds starving (Somalians, etc).
2. No natural predators left to do it for us (if only sharks could walk)
3. Overpopulation is driving out other animals from native habitats
4. High danger of collisions with cars on roadways
5. Hunters could feed their families with the meat and cloth them with their kill's suits, dresses, etc.
Vote Republican!
Is this article going to create "BSE is dying" trolls?
His policy now is never to shoot a lame looking deer. In fact, he only shoots healthy looking bucks, no doe (does?) or fawns. He figures if the deer is a strong healthy buck, it's much less likely to be infected. One of his hunting partners will sometimes kill a lame looking deer for the sake of a) putting it out of its misery and b) keeping it from infecting any other animals.
Apparently, you can no longer transport a deer carcass across the Wisconsin state line into Illinois. You can transport the cut and packaged meat, but not the whole animal. You are also encouraged to donate what parts of the carcass you don't take home with you to the reserve from whence you killed it, so it can be studied.
Scary stuff, indeed. Starts getting me thinking about becoming a vegetarian, even though I love venison.
-SB
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
Slashdot is news for nerds. AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease. Need I further explain?
What signature defines me as a person?
This is from my mother...head of infection control at a major hospital...
It's a "preon" it's not a bacteria, virus or anything you've ever learned in biology class. (please excuse people how actually have learned what's known about preons)
The fact is they can't stop preons with ANY known medicine, vaccine, etc. They CANNOT sterilize intruments that have come in contact with the preon.
Preons are prevelant is places other than deer(e.g CWD). It is not known how long they can survive outside hosts, or anything else for that matter. They've begun to speculate in the past few years but that's all.
It's a serious issue.
Please mod parent up... it's got some good replies to some other high modded posts, and deserves to be more widely read.
Well those figures are skewed though. First of all, more non-gay people took the survey because the gay population was too busy sleeping with each other to fill out the cards. Second, it's those bisexuals that have spread the disease to us individuals who do not lack the braincell that says "DON'T BE A T00L, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO SLEEP WITH WOMEN.". ;p
--- Concerned Cow
That's true. But honestly, there wouldn't be a problem if people wouldn't sleep around. Everyone has their own morals, but come on now. Honestly, deep down, all kidding aside, I bet everyone here (provided you are male ;p) want's a woman he can rely on, fall in love with, and remain with for the rest of his life. Yeah, that's hard as hell to find, but they do exist. And I'll DEFINATLY get flamed for this one, but sex is just like any other materialistic object. Like, the XBOX or something you have really wanted comes out and you finally, after months of waiting, get one. Then eventually, it loses its appeal, and you have to buy NEW games. New Cars. New PDA's ;p And finally, new wives. Why? Sex gets old, and the unfortunate thing is that most people, and most = usually men, don't realize that what they really need is a woman to love, not a woman to just sleep with. And yea, I'm a guy dammit too, I'm not some chick blowing off steam.
So, how do gays fit in? I have no flipping clue in hell how that crap happened. Everywhere you look there are dumb people, and they are just a little more to the pot. Do I respect their opinion? Yea, do I think they are right? No. Oh well, rant rant rant.
Hmm. That is interesting, but I believe it deals more with masterbation. If gay people would just masterbate more instead of sleeping with other dudes, maybe they would *auto-correct* themselves. I mean come on now. Type in the word "porn" and you are overwhelmed on the net with good hardcore naked women. That's what those bastards need. They need their senses to be overtaken by good ole big tatty p0rn.
Bush (Dubya that is) is a Texan. All Texan's like BBQ and are required to eat beef at every meal. I guess there's hope....
Latex condoms are riddled with voids about 3-10x larger than the HIV virus.
This is a lie perpatrated by Christians. Do the research. Latex is not porous.
For those poor Slashdot readers who have never had the chance to taste real venison jerky, let me recommend a site to you: VenisonWorld.com. Venison World is a little store in po-dunk Eden, TX. Eden is out in the middle of nowhere but I used to drive through there several times a year while travelling between home and college. The venison jerky that this place sells is quite pricey but is really out of this world. That Oberto beef jerky for sale at the 7-Eleven can't touch this stuff.
This is a lie perpatrated by Christians. Do the research. Latex is not porous.
.1 micron).
No Christians here, just a pragmatic agnost. Perhaps you should put down the Penthouse (I can stereotype, too).
Yes, latex does have natural voids in it. That's one reason why manufacturers test for pinholes in their latex condoms and gloves. Guess what? The detectors are pretty good to about 5 microns (HIV is about
When stored improperly (heat, light, exposure to air), used too vigorously (as if there were such a thing), or comes in contact with an oil-based lubricant, then you're fucked, so to speak.
In a quote from Consumer Reports (1999) they claim that "With correct use, a condom will break as little as 2 percent of the time and, authorities believe, will slip off as little as 1 percent of the time." So that's at least a 3% chance of getting infected. Granted, if you're a typical Slashdotter, that means you'll probably go your whole life without testing the odds too often, but still, is it worth it?
Yes we would. People reproduce, and will still have stupid populations.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
New Plague Indeed.
...and if you are one of the few left in 2025 ,not much outside the memory of your own loved ones is going to mean much I would think.
:)
What many here are joking about is the beginning of a plague like has never been witnessed before.
Initial infections were first noted in New Guinea in the '50's. Called Kuru then it was transmitted as a result cannibalism, (Natives would eat dead relatives) and having 100% mortality. Since that time Scientists have known about prions and the danger they represent but have always maintained prion disease was self-limiting (100% mortality) within one generation.
The problem is the disease just won't go away: Witness England in the 1980's. There, again, it was felt the disease was the result of feeding animal protiens infected with Prion to herbivores. The public response by government officials was the same: destroy infected animals in a big show to convince the public 'something was being done' but in fact the real problem is of course self--limiting (100% mortality). Besides, had not the ignorant British fed animal protein to herbivores nothing would have come of it at all.
Now we enter the 1990's and our old friend is back--only now something very ominous has occurred. You see a Missouri Deer hunter, up until about 1998 or so considered himself lucky if he could get a 'Doe Tag' or a 'Bonus Tag' and thereby legally take more than one deer per season. But now, all of the sudden, all a hunter need do, in Missouri, is simply request a bonus Tag and he will be given one - for a modest fee of course. Now in Missouri no deer Hunter need be lucky to bag all the deer he wants.
What may we infer from all of this?
1) Prion have not gone away.
2) They are not self limiting-but they are 100% fatal.
3) Prions are now in our food chain.
4) No viable explanation has, as yet come forth as to how North American 'wild' herbivores have contracted prion disease.
5) Certain sectors of the Government are more than mildly alarmed hoping the American Deer Hunter will buy them some time to figure what to do. (At what cost to the hunter and his family?)
6) World Health organizations are now holding their collective breath and watching Great Britain for possible massive human prion infections to begin to manifest.
Now for the real Soothsayer of Doom stuff:
Fast forward to the year 2025--England has been quarantined for seven years (nothing goes in nothing goes out) The crematories are running night and day. In Asia mass starvation has begun as prion infection has entered the Piscean as well as other food chains. In Europe and the United State martial law is declared when the lies and dissembling is no longer effective. As the deaths and bodies pile up, diseases thought long dormant receive new life and also join the rampage in an unrelenting slaughter which will leave half to three-quarters of the earths animal life forms dead.
Its already started and nothing is going to stop it-certainly not the Missouri Deer Hunters.
Of course we could agree I am just another raving, lunatic, crackpot soothsayer of doom, forget about all this prion crap and go grab a hamburger at McDonalds
Just another Anonymous Coward
>> I bet everyone here (provided you are male ;p) want's a woman he can rely on, fall in love with, and remain with for the rest of his life.
No way! What I want is to have sex as much as possible with as many different women as possible, with no risk of pregnancy or disease.
A lot of women want the same thing with men.
Unfortunately, that's not possible yet-- so I'm biding my time... narf narf
PSE stands for pale soft exudative. It's a meat quality problem for pork not a TSE disease.
PSE occurs when the post slaughter pH of pork drops too fast while the carcass is still hot. This causes muscle proteins to denature.
The muslce protein denatureation causes the pork to lose water holding capacity, this cause is to appear PALE, lose structure making it SOFT, and EXUDE water. Hence PSE.
Read more about it here:
http://www.aps.uoguelph.ca/~swatland/ch9_1.htm
>> Hey, I didn't go through 2 million years of evolution to get to the top of the food chain all for nothing! ;-)
Next up: Thoolie argues with a bear and a shark that *he* is on the top rung. Heh heh!
BSE, or Mad Cow Disease, as the press has dubbed it, appears to have been transferred from sheep to cattle. About twenty-five ago Great Britain began allowing feed processors to use steamed sheep bone meal in cattle feed. BCE began to appear in bovines a few years later.
The disease in sheep is known as scrapie and has been known for around 250 years, according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA even has an active program intended to eliminate scrapie. I am not aware of any definite link between scrapie and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were.
How scrapie was transmitted to elk and deer doesn't seem to be clear, but deer are distant relatives of goats and sheep. It does seems clear that politics is the reason for the name Chronic Wasting Disease, just as the press has insisted on Mad Cow Disease, instead of referring to the true origins of the disease and admitting that it originated in sheep.
IANA pharmacologist. However Organophosphates is known to leech copper from the brain and replace it with manganese, and represent the most credible explanation for BSE in Cows, Scrapie in Sheep and CJD in people.
Still, there's no evidence that this particular disease
There is NO evidence BSE/CJD is an infectious (#1), and little evidence this/these are even a *disease*. There is masses of evidence that Organophosphates poisoning produces exactly the same symptoms, Brain lesions resulting in Neupathy; by a know process Manganese leeching Copper from the brain. One of the British victims of CJD was vegetarian who had not eaten meat for years, did own cats that where treated with Organophosphates flea treatments.
Recent autopsies of Alzheimer patients show that ~30% of them exhibit brain matter characteristics consistent with CJD. THe question is: is current US beef already heavily infected with a long-term strain of this condition?
I'll try to find a link later.
In this case, PSE refers to Porcine Spongiform Encephalopathy, which is most definitely a TSE.
Regards,
Ross
"An Introductory Hypothesis on the causes of the Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies"o m/IntroHyp.htm
_ ease/cjd.html
a pte a4.htm#820644
I nsecticide -Mad-Cow.htm
C ow.html
m ad cow.html
2 a.htm
U TF -8&q=CJD+BSE+O
http://www.purdeyenvironment.c
"Organophosphates Implicated In Mad Cow Disease"
http://www.cqs.com/opmadcow.htm
"Cases of BSE and CJD May be Due to Environmental Contamination with Manganese Compounds and Organophosphates"
http://www.nzhealth.net.nz/dis
"The nature and cause of BSE
Other theories about the nature and cause of BSE "
http://www.bseinquiry.gov.uk/report/volume2/ch
"ICI's ex-chemical weapon insecticide causes BSE & CJD Cover-up Insecticide causes Mad Cow disease"
http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/ICI-
"A Case for the Role of Copper Deficiency in "Mad-Cow" Disease and Human Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease"
By William H. Dresher, Ph.D., P.E.,Geoffrey Greetham, Ph.D., F.I.M. and Brenda J. Harrison, Ph.D.
http://innovations.copper.org/2001/12/Mad-
http://www.treff-raum-espaciotime.com/Articles/
"Mad Cows or Mad Scientists? Could the Scientists Be Wrong on Madcow Disease?"
http://www.safe2use.com/ca-ipm/01-02-0
There are hundreds more similars links on google:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=
Shouldn't be worried about disease, unless you're from Wisconsin... I shot a buck and a doe this year, and asked the DNR to test my dear, they whacked the head off both and told me not to worry, and if I was just be sure not to cut into bone marrow. I'm not worried about CWD...at least not yet. Look for posted test results from MNDNR test sites that should be out within the week. Only then can we begin to worry, or not.
I thought that was you have when you suck at quake...
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Err... I wouldn't be so hasty about claiming culinary superiority, there certainly are people who cook around here, and that well.
As for nutrients, I haven't had any problem with my diet, even when training heavily at martial arts, and I'm a vegetarian. Granted, I eat cheese, but that's vegetarian under most definitions (at least the rennet-free stuff).
Lea
Just reading the headline, I thought it was some kind of disease aflicting SUV buyers, unrepentant newspaper buyers, people that print a 400 page document only to print it again after changing a line and leave it to rot afterwards, people that do not reuse/recycle etc...
---
Reuse till you recycle. Recycle till you are recycled.
what happen?
Chronic Wasting Diseases Investigate You!