Thursday, 22 April 2021

Prions Are Going to End the World — Countere Magazine

quote [ One farm in Britain can supply ground beef to the entire United Kingdom. This is why, if you go to donate blood, a questionnaire will ask you whether you traveled to the UK in the 90s. ]

This is so gloomy it should come with a trigger warning. The article does not mention that there is ongoing treatment research.
[SFW] [health]
[by Paracetamol@8:33pmGMT]

Comments

5th Earth said @ 10:06pm GMT on 22nd Apr [Score:1 Underrated]
This article massively overstates how easy it is to transmit prions. They are scary bastards, but they are not going to end the world.
smoki said @ 9:44pm GMT on 23rd Apr [Score:2]
No, they won't end the world, not by a longshot. They might have had a chance in the BSE/CJD (mad cow disease), but even then it didn't amount to all that much in the big picture.

But scary they are. I actually worked with them in the lab and while it is reassuring that they don't float around in air, you have this anxious feeling that you might catch a horrible 100% fatal disease and not know until decade(s) later.
donnie said @ 12:06pm GMT on 24th Apr
while it is reassuring that they don't float around in air

Aerosols Transmit Prions to Immunocompetent and Immunodeficient Mice

So... I guess if somehow prion death resulted in the victim bursting (thus aerosolizing their toxic remains), or if prions infected the lungs, perhaps, and shed prions into our breath ooze, then they may possibly become airborne transmissive. Seems unlikely?
smoki said @ 1:06pm GMT on 26th Apr
One lucky part is that most infectivity is inside the brain, so for the most part prions stay neatly packaged.

But if individual with prion disease were to explode or maybe suffer a headshot wound, it is believable that this would pose a hazard of infection to others. Still the odds are not so high that I would lose sleep over it. :)
lilmookieesquire said @ 12:27am GMT on 23rd Apr [Score:1 Informative]
In the publication’s defense, this is hot tho; Link
the circus said @ 9:22pm GMT on 22nd Apr
So it's like Ice-nine for proteins.

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