Live data from Hacker News

When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

npr.org

51–60 of 215 posts

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#51
post #36

Can we view this as nature's mechanism to prevent cannibalism amongst species? Mad cow disease occurred when cattle were fed the remains of other cattle in the form of meat and bone meal

If anything, the aversion to cannibalism would be an effect of prion disease.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#52
post #36

Can we view this as nature's mechanism to prevent cannibalism amongst species? Mad cow disease occurred when cattle were fed the remains of other cattle in the form of meat and bone meal

I think assigning animus to nature is misleading here. It's a factor that once known would influence people away from cannibalism, but there's plenty of cannibalistic species that don't seem to suffer from prion diseases (and CWD is the opposite -- prion disease with rare cannibalism).

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#53
post #24

For the past months I've been seriously considering starting a theme restaurant that served wild meats - deer, hogs, gators, large constrictors, etc. That idea just went out the window.

Prion-disease transmission from wild game is still quite rare.

I'd be more worried about exotic parasites or radioactivity from the wild hogs.

[0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/110...

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would nature care?

Cannibalism seriously threatens a species' survival. Risk of disease from eating same-species meat is a good way to stop it.

Small mammals often respond to stress with cannibalism.

http://www.petplace.com/article/small-mammals/general/when-y...

Rabbits are somewhat infamous for eating their young.

I'm not sure there is any research about it, but it could be a resource preserving behavior.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#55
post #3

I understand prion diseases are rare and it's more likely I'll die in a car accident or something, but the persistence of prions is just a horrifying concept. Highly resistant to heat, radiation, proteases, enzymes... Basically if you've got a prion disease it's just a matter of time before they end you.

> Basically if you've got a prion disease it's just a matter of time before they end you. Unless you had a mind backup and a second body ready. Which, I think, all medicine ultimately aims, should aim, for; Why bother learning how to repair the single same body over and over (which won't help in unexpected catastrophic failures aka fatal accidents anyway) when you can just grow and jump into a new one?

While we have thousands of years of cultural belief that mind and body are distinct, I'm not aware of any scientific evidence for that. And there is a lot of evidence that the mind is directly dependent on the state of the body--change the body (drugs, injury, etc) and inevitably the state of mind changes too.

So I don't know of any reason to think that it's even possible to separate a mind from a body, let alone move one to a new one.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would nature care?

Cannibalism seriously threatens a species' survival. Risk of disease from eating same-species meat is a good way to stop it.

Hardly. Plenty of species exhibit cannibalism; see certain spiders and praying mantis (mantis?) post-mating rituals.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#57

I first heard about prions and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease after getting a letter saying I may have been exposed. I had surgery after someone with CJD, but before that person died, was autopsied, and diagnosed. That was over a decade ago. So far no signs of it. I did make peace with the fact that I have a much higher probability of dying from it than the average American. The only substantivu changes in my life are: (a…

Shouldn't autoclaves destroy all proteins, prion or otherwise? What exactly is the exposure vector?

edit: Unsourced statement from wikipedia[1]: "However, prions, such as those associated with Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, may not be destroyed by autoclaving at the typical 134 °C for three minutes or 121 °C for 15 minutes.[citation needed]"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclave

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#58

I did a bunch of research (googling) back in the late 90's or 2000s when the mad cow disease outbreak first happened mainly in England. I thought it was pretty terrifying and I wanted to know what the hell was going on. I read about Kuru all the way back then and the take away was that people shouldn't eat the brain and nervous tissue of other people or Kuru could result. But also it seemed that mad cow disease was o…

AMR and such, is that our famous pink slime that became all the rage/outrage awhile back? To the point we have quite a few establishments making it well known they never used such products. industrialization did not do any favors towards animals, especially in regards to processing and such for food

When indigenous peoples work to make use of all of an animal we call it respect.

Do it in a factory and all of the sudden it is gross.

There's pet foods that advertise on the TV that they don't contain any chicken byproduct meal. The horror of feeding a dog stuff it would be happy to eat.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMR and such, is that our famous pink slime that became all the rage/outrage awhile back? To the point we have quite a few establishments making it well known they never used such products. industrialization did not do any favors towards animals, especially in regards to processing and such for food

When indigenous peoples work to make use of all of an animal we call it respect. Do it in a factory and all of the sudden it is gross. There's pet foods that advertise on the TV that they don't contain any chicken byproduct meal. The horror of feeding a dog stuff it would be happy to eat.

make use of all of an animal

This does not imply eating the entire animal.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cannibalism seriously threatens a species' survival. Risk of disease from eating same-species meat is a good way to stop it.

Hardly. Plenty of species exhibit cannibalism; see certain spiders and praying mantis (mantis?) post-mating rituals.

Correct, I don't mean to imply that no species are cannibalistic; as you note, some instances are well-known.

Nevertheless, cannibalism can be a real risk for some species and adaptations to prevent it are useful, especially in the case of mammals.

Post reply on HN