Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 311 posts

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#141

Post by admash »

Compounding USDA's lax practices has been its refusal to allow beef processors to independently test cattle for mad cow disease. In 2004, Creekstone Farms, a Kansas processor of black Angus beef with a large Japanese clientele, asked for permission to test its 300,000 cattle for BSE using a $500,000 testing site it had built to USDA specifications.

But the agency ruled that the BSE test was licensed only for "surveillance" of animal health, and rejected Creekstone's request because it implied "a consumer safety aspect" that was "not scientifically warranted."

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-05/uoia-ftf0515...

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#142

Post by bluGill »

GioM wrote: post #115

The forests of New Brunswick are routinely sprayed with large amounts of glyphosphate herbicide. Is it possible that this is the cause, instead of prions? [1] https://www.conservationcouncil.ca/where-our-forest-is-being... [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/liberals-greens... [3] https://nben.ca/en/component/tags/tag/glyphosate-ban [4] http://www.stopsprayingnb.ca/?page_id=118

No, glyphosphate is used in a lot of different places and is well studied. There are the usual conspiracy theories but the science is pretty strong.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#143

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

turing_complete wrote: post #78
Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iirc hospitals that treat patients with prion diseases incinerate all materials that contact the patients. I don't know how they sanitize the rooms but it can't be cheap or eco friendly.

Destroying prions is eco friendly.

Humans need a non toxic environment. Plants, and life in general, will find a way. With, and without, us.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#144

Post by XorNot »

dcolkitt wrote: post #125
codingbeer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever a topic about something that could potentially destroy humanity comes up (say, climate issues), there is always some comment that makes a reasonable argument of why things are not as bad as they seem. This never happens when prions are the topic.

The simplest counterpoint to prion cataclysm fear is that it hasn't happened yet. That implies a low chance that it'll happen anytime in the near future. There's no evidence that any significant human population has ever been wiped out by prions at any point in the history of the species. Heck, we haven't even observed widespread (>10% infected) prion disease in any species. At least with something like climate chang…

Conversely industrialized meat production is relatively recent, and so the volume of prion's being introduced into the environment is potentially much higher then the rate at which they are degrading naturally, not to mention the degree of regional cross-mixing of sources.

Prion contamination can now be shipped around the world in about 24 hours, where it can enter new populations much more easily.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#145

Post by iamthepieman »

fao_ wrote: post #97
giantg2 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bleach works as surface decontamination agent. They know it works for CWD, and I expect it works for others too.

> Bleach works as surface decontamination agent. They know it works for CWD, and I expect it works for others too. I remember reading that nothing but incineration would work in the context of Food-and-Mouth disease, but it seems modern techniques in brain surgery do use bleach. Interesting. Essentially, the only thing that works is disintegrating the prions. You can't wash them off, since you're simply washing them…

I'm missing the reference to foot and mouth disease. FMD is a viral infection and is not caused by prions.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#146

Post by Amezarak »

dcolkitt wrote: post #125
codingbeer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever a topic about something that could potentially destroy humanity comes up (say, climate issues), there is always some comment that makes a reasonable argument of why things are not as bad as they seem. This never happens when prions are the topic.

The simplest counterpoint to prion cataclysm fear is that it hasn't happened yet. That implies a low chance that it'll happen anytime in the near future. There's no evidence that any significant human population has ever been wiped out by prions at any point in the history of the species. Heck, we haven't even observed widespread (>10% infected) prion disease in any species. At least with something like climate chang…

Proteins do eventually break down in the environment. If you hugely multiply the number of humans and population density, you are creating a situation where prion diseases can become endemic where they couldn't have been before.

This is probably exactly what happened with CWD - deer overpopulation plus the random protein misfold created the conditions for a contagious disease where it didn't exist before.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#147

Post by XorNot »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #58
rndude wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prions are incredible hard to destroy. To quote from Wikipedia: `Prion aggregates are stable, and this structural stability means that prions are resistant to denaturation by chemical and physical agents: they cannot be destroyed by ordinary disinfection or cooking.`

Iirc hospitals that treat patients with prion diseases incinerate all materials that contact the patients. I don't know how they sanitize the rooms but it can't be cheap or eco friendly.

Chemical agents which cause protein-crosslinking would be the preferred method - you can broadly make every side-group reactive and cause them all to stitch together with anything else organic, which tends to inactivate them (makes them a big blob which can't do much).

But it's nasty stuff to work with, since it also happily does tons of damage to the proteins making up the humans applying it.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#148

Post by stuff4ben »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #132
stuff4ben wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep I'm one of them. Lived in the UK in the early 80's as a child. Gave blood for the first time when I was in college in the 90's to the Red Cross here in the US, and they mailed me back saying to never give blood again but didn't specify a reason. It wasn't until a few years later that I found out why. And the fact I might have a prion disease lurking in my blood sometimes terrifies me.

Is there a blood test for that?

I don't think so. I believe it was a screening question. Which was odd since they allowed me to give blood at that time.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#149

Post by admash »

admash wrote: post #141

Compounding USDA's lax practices has been its refusal to allow beef processors to independently test cattle for mad cow disease. In 2004, Creekstone Farms, a Kansas processor of black Angus beef with a large Japanese clientele, asked for permission to test its 300,000 cattle for BSE using a $500,000 testing site it had built to USDA specifications. But the agency ruled that the BSE test was licensed only for "surveil…

The “fun” question is whether prions are present in milk and other dairy products. One might argue that they are not, by virtue of them being largely localized to neural tissue.

Of course, this raises the question of how CWD is being transmitted in elk, since elk don’t eat elk.

“Scientists believe CWD proteins (prions) likely spread between animals through body fluids like feces, saliva, blood, or urine, either through direct contact or indirectly through environmental contamination of soil, food or water.”

https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/transmission.html

Milk is clearly a body fluid, though is curiously absent from the above statement.

And as other comments about the difficulty of sterilizing prions make clear, pasteurization will have no effect.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#150

Post by reaperducer »

admash wrote: post #141

Compounding USDA's lax practices has been its refusal to allow beef processors to independently test cattle for mad cow disease. In 2004, Creekstone Farms, a Kansas processor of black Angus beef with a large Japanese clientele, asked for permission to test its 300,000 cattle for BSE using a $500,000 testing site it had built to USDA specifications. But the agency ruled that the BSE test was licensed only for "surveil…

Considering the history of the meat industry, I'm OK with not allowing the farms to police themselves.
Post reply on HN