season 2: Chronic Wasting Disease

Ok, I'm only on season two. In one episode this football player was taking elk velveteen and supposedly comes down with Chronic Wasting Disease. I looked this up. "Although reports in the popular press have been made of humans being affected by CWD, a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests, more epidemiologic and laboratory studies are needed to monitor the possibility of such transmissions. The epidemiological study further concluded, "as a precaution, hunters should avoid eating deer and elk tissues known to harbor the CWD agent (e.g., brain, spinal cord, eyes, spleen, tonsils, lymph nodes) from areas where CWD has been identified."

There haven't been any confirmed cases of CWD in humans. And if there were, I don't think they have any treatment for it. It's similar to Mad Cow Disease, a prion, and there isn't any medicine that will stop it.

And once prions get into the environment, they are very hard to kill. The size and structure of prions make them resistant to proteases, heat, radiation and fixative (ie formaldehyde) treatments. To destroy prions you need to use agent that will hydrolyze its peptide bonds and destroy it's tertiary structure. The problem is that if you don't totally denature the prions they can actually fold back into confirmation and renature. It's really like zombie-proteins, you need to go for the head-shot, and remember to double tap or they will reanimate and keep converting other proteins...
On a small scale we can destroy prions on places like surgical instruments by prolonged immersion in strong sodium hydroxide or bleach, followed by high temperature autoclaving. However this is not even always true. Incineration is the only sure way to kill a prion.

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