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."

Comments

Greg Egan

[Jhan]

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.

Squeeze my sponge and I'll squeeze yours

[Subcarrier]

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?

Re:Squeeze my sponge and I'll squeeze yours

[BlowChunx]

The point that was trying to be made is this: if you don't know how it is spread, you can't possibly say what is (un)safe to do.

It seems likely that the elks don't rub brains in daily life, so handling the brain most likely isn't the vector of infection...

Deer Population Control

[dochood]

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

Re:Deer Population Control

[bfinuc]

Note that deer populations were never a problem before hunters with guns showed up.

The argument that you should kill deer in order to reduce the occurrence of the disease is rather dubious, not least because it isn't clear that the "disease" is infectuous.

Calling people "bunny huggers" is like tattooing "I'm an asshole" on your forehead. Go ahead, whatever. (Put more philosophically, it reveals your locus of loyalty without materially contributing to the argument.)

The claim that hunting stabilizes the population is invented. In fact you don't know why the population is what it is - and neither do I. One way to test it would be to ban hunting completely for a decade or two and see what happens. None too likely in the near future.

An important fact is that hunting - or something -reduced the population of many species in North America over the last few hundred years.

The claim that hunting "stabilises" something which was in a long term decline and has recently bounced back is sophistry - it presupposes that we all agree that the populations are stable and claims without proof that they would be less so if hunting disappeared.

Of course there are still a lot of other factors involved. I suspect that the spread in marginal wooded areas has a lot to do with the increase in deer population.

The post is a troll.

Re:Great...

[Cyno01]

I really dont get these eco-wanks who are all against hunting. The reason we have hunting is to fix our mistakes! I know that hunting has become an excuse for hicks to go shoot off their guns, but it does serve a purpose. The deer population needs to be kept in check, theres no argument for that. Years ago we fucked up and removed the natural checks, wolves, mt lions etc for fear of our livestock. The unfortunate consequence was that without predators the deer population exploded. Now we have too many deer, and because of too many deer problems arise, like chronic wasting disease. I think its wrong for hicks to go out and kill things for the sake of killing things, but without them we'd have carcases of starved and diseased deer everywhere, hundreds more (people) would die each year in deer vs car accidents, and our crops would be gone. I live in the middle of metro Milwaukee, i've had a deer in my front yard. Maybe in the deep suberbs, but you shouldn't have deer in your yard in the middle of the city! Hunting is just our way of trying to fix what we screwed up. I dont understand why people think piles of rotting deer carcases along the side of the road are preferable to sharpshooters in helos.

Re:Great...

[Kaboom13]

"Now the rednecks and hillbillies will have a government approved reason for hunting defenseless animals for entertainment."
I am not a hunter, but believe it or not, controlled hunting is neccesary. Most of the natural predators of deer have been killed by humans, because they threaten cattle. Deer are voracious eaters, and without predators to heck their population will decimate their enviroment. Controlled and limited (and legal) hunting is the only way to clean up the mess we made in killing off all the larger predators. Some people enjoy hunting, and often pay for the priviledge. Hunters did not need a goverment approved reason, they already had one. Furthermore, deer are far from defenseless, and in an unarmed fight would probably win against a human. Hunter's use rifles or arrows because thats what we are best at.

Re:So

[BandwidthHog]

Seems the researchers are collecting entire heads of deer, and not just brainstems.

Hopefully we won't have a lot of deer hunters erroneously informed by slashdot's misleading summary; asking the public to harvest the brain stems of these animals wouldn't be terribly wise.

Fortunately, this being slashdot, basic demographics ensure that won't be much of a problem.

Re:Deers?

[brandorf]

Nobody buys deer, but they do pay to have their kills processed. The state also profits from the sale of Deer Hunting Licenses, and local retailers benefit from the sale of long guns, bows, ammunition, camo/blazewear, tree stands, etc. Hunting equipment is a very profitable industry.

Thanksgiving topic

[Suffering Bastard]

During Thanksgiving dinner at my parent's house in a Chicago suburb, one of our traditional family guests brought up this very same problem. He's a bowhunter who makes frequent trips up to Wisconsin to snag a few deer. He has had two friends recently die of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, and while there is still as yet no proof that the disease came from a deer, both unfortunate victims had eaten game deer within a few months prior to contracting the disease.

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