Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada • Hacker News Board

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#291

Post by regularfry » Thu, May 06, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #275

regularfry wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I understand the concept. It's broken. If I am "consenting", but not to the action that's actually happening, I am not, in fact, consenting. If I believe that I am consenting to sex with someone that's not my husband, in that moment I am not consenting to sex with my husband. If they then have sex with me, knowing that that is my state of mind , that is non-consensual.

You do not understand the concept: I decide I want to try a bit of "something new", and I pay someone to induce a Capgras delusion in me. At which point, my wife seems like an imposter. I wish to have sex with this new person, and I am also sure my real wife has given me permission to, prior to this. You can tell me as much as you like that it's "really" my wife, but, in my delusion, I am quite sure it's just someone…

I do understand the concept. You have not changed my understanding with this description.

If I am suffering a delusion, and you know that, then you know that I am not mentally competent. You know that, if I agree to something, I do not correctly understand what I am agreeing to. Any expression of consent you extract from me is invalid.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#292

Post by s1artibartfast » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

Google234 wrote: post #282

s1artibartfast wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The risk of cow->human BSE transmission is infinitesimal. I don't think your sources support this conclusion. bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) rarely passes the species barrier, but it is difficult, if not impossible to estimate what the rate is in the absence of mitigations.

Don’t we know already? In the UK weren’t millions of cows infected and eaten for years with only a few hundred human transmissions?

There are a plethora of unknowns that make it very difficult to check transmission rate. Transmission is rare, but this could be impacted by lots of factors. There were hundreds of thousands of cows in the UK, but there were also testing and culling programs to try to prevent them from entering the food supply. There were also regulations on which parts of the cows could be used for human consumption.

Last but not least, there are huge uncertainties around the diagnosis rate of mad cow in humans. For example, a 2013 study (1) found that 1 in 2000 people in the UK now have Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Based on this, it could be possible that transmission rates are very high if a human were to eat mad cow nervous tissue.

1) https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f5675.full

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#293

Post by fareesh » Thu, May 06, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

JPLeRouzic wrote: post #279

fareesh wrote: post #157

I lived in Fredericton for about 7 years and have been around the province a bit. The air in Moncton is definitely unusual. I wouldn't be surprised if it has something to do with it.

Could it be the smell of cyanobacteria[1], gathered by tidal bore from the Petitcodiac river[2], specifically by Hall's creek reservoir[3]? " This reservoir has experienced cyanobacteria algal blooms for many years due to high levels of nutrients combined with a lack of water velocity from damming. " [1] https://toxics.usgs.gov/highlights/algal_toxins/algal_faq.ht... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moncton#Tidal_bo…

Yeah it is definitely something in the water that's awful, the smell is especially pronounced close to it.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#294

Post by eganp » Thu, May 06, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

bigcorp-slave wrote: post #241

eganp wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk of cow->human BSE transmission is infinitesimal. Species barriers in prions are surprisingly strong and, for practical purposes, nearly impermeable [0]. In fact, the Prion Protein (PrP) in humans causes multiple distinct diseases including CJD, Kuru, and FFI. Infectious prion confirmations are probably highly influenced by glycosylation [1,2]. Even if this testing wasn't god awfully slow, it's unclear one le…

What you are saying is dangerous. We had a serious set of exactly these transmission events in Britain only a few decades ago. Clearly the risk is not infinitesimal.

Dangerous? The hypothesized connection is not remotely clear. In vitro transformation of human PrP into PrP(Sc) by bovine PrP(Sc) is a necessary for the causal model. The fact that a strong species barrier exists, in vitro and in vivo, points towards a spurious association.

It's understandable why one might infer from the correlation that there's a relationship but this is confounded by observation. The baseline expectation for CJD in a population is 1-2 cases/million [0]. vCJD cases in the UK never exceeded 30/yr [1, Fig 2. a]. Yes, vCJD occurs primarily in younger people - but that's circular as vCJD is defined as CJD-like disease with early onset. If cross-species transmission were common, one would expect a similar spike in age >40.

The incidence of vCJD, even at its peak, was exceedingly rare. Many things, such as observation bias, pollution, or rare side-effects from faddish street drugs could be at fault here. It's tempting to jump to conclusions, a la "eating fats makes you fat," but it's totally unwarranted in the face of the in vitro and in vivo data demonstrating strong species barriers.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cjd/occurrence-transmission.html [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00401-020-02153-7

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#295

Post by shkkmo » Thu, May 06, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

mannerheim wrote: post #269

shkkmo wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The persuasivity of an argument does not guarantee its truthfulness. There are plenty of sources, including court documents, that verify that the USDA was trying to prevent private testing, not just claims being made on the basisnof private testing. The ban on testing was justified by the USDA based on the potential for safety claims, but the ban itself was on testing. I don't personally buy the argument, if the US t…

Creekstone specifically argued for its use for marketing purposes:[0] > Creekstone claims to have suffered $200,000 per day in lost revenue as a result of the diminished export market. Stewart Decl. ¶ 17. Moreover, in markets where U.S. beef is available, Creekstone contends that consumer fears about BSE have diminished its sales. See Id. ¶¶ 4, 5 (discussing market surveys in Japan and U.S.). To allay the concerns of…

You seems to be laboring under several misapprehensions.

> Japan would subsequently go on to ban American beef again, before allowing imports of American beef once more in 2019,

1) The Japanese rules on beef exports did not change significantly between 2006 and 2019. The ban on old beef that was imposed in 2006 was not lifted until 2019. While an argument relating to this was brough up in the original case (that the USDA lost) but not in the appeals case (that the USDA won.)

2) Nothing in the decision in favor of the USDA that I saw was justified on the basis of the purposes of the testing. The decision came down that the judges readings of what authority the USDA has under US law.

So yes, the USDA has the authority to prevent testing and has used it in ways that directly harmed a US business and I don't see how they protected anyone in the process.

Just because our laws give the USDA that authority, doesn't mean that is a good thing.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#296

Post by eganp » Thu, May 06, 2021, 6:21 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #292

Google234 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t we know already? In the UK weren’t millions of cows infected and eaten for years with only a few hundred human transmissions?

There are a plethora of unknowns that make it very difficult to check transmission rate. Transmission is rare, but this could be impacted by lots of factors. There were hundreds of thousands of cows in the UK, but there were also testing and culling programs to try to prevent them from entering the food supply. There were also regulations on which parts of the cows could be used for human consumption. Last but not le…

This study is looking at the appendix, not any brain tissue. Without considering symptoms, it's possible that altered PrP expression and/or folding in the appendix does not cause vCJD or result from exposure to PrP(Sc).

Also, these antibodies are not very selective for a given confirmation. Idk how this made it into the BMJ because standard in the PrP field is a protease resistance assay given the issues with Ab specificity.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#297

Post by s1artibartfast » Thu, May 06, 2021, 7:21 PM UTC

eganp wrote: post #296

s1artibartfast wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a plethora of unknowns that make it very difficult to check transmission rate. Transmission is rare, but this could be impacted by lots of factors. There were hundreds of thousands of cows in the UK, but there were also testing and culling programs to try to prevent them from entering the food supply. There were also regulations on which parts of the cows could be used for human consumption. Last but not le…

This study is looking at the appendix, not any brain tissue. Without considering symptoms, it's possible that altered PrP expression and/or folding in the appendix does not cause vCJD or result from exposure to PrP(Sc). Also, these antibodies are not very selective for a given confirmation. Idk how this made it into the BMJ because standard in the PrP field is a protease resistance assay given the issues with Ab spec…

This article is from the UK National Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance and Control and is cited by by the NHS and widely in the literature.

I am not an expert in the field, but it seems relevant to consider latent or asymptomatic PrP expression when assessing how often it crosses the species barrier.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#298

Post by dmix » Thu, May 06, 2021, 8:05 PM UTC

minitech wrote: post #213

dmix wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.honeycolony.com/article/excitotoxins-fda-approve... For some reason my edit immediately after making the post didn’t make it but I meant to include this with a statement “I have no idea about the veracity of this claim or website”. I’m not looking to defending this with one hard but it could be right.

If you have no idea about the veracity of this claim, it's irresponsible to flat-out write "you get plenty of excitotoxins from eating MSG".

Fair point

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#299

Post by rubicon33 » Thu, May 06, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #267

rubicon33 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What science are you referring to? The most I've heard about it is the Bayer lawsuit. "A San Francisco jury initially awarded Johnson $289.2 million after finding the chemical glyphosate in Roundup caused his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma" [1] [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/bayer-glyphosate-lawsuit/bay...

A jury trial is not science. Juries tend to be swayed by emotions and sticking it go big companies not right. (I can't offer you anything better to replace them though ) There have been many real scientific studies done. https://www.epa.gov/pesticides/epa-finalizes-glyphosate-miti... is the most readable summary

A publication from the EPA citing science, without linking the studies, is also not science.

I honestly do not trust the EPA to do a fair review here, given how deep the connections between big business and government are. It's extremely naïve to assume this was a completely unbiased, purely scientific undertaking.

Your point is fair too, that juries tend to be swayed by emotion. Unfortunately, unless a true third party does an actual scientific review, I'll be avoiding the stuff.

Re: Doctors investigate mystery brain disease in Canada

#300

Post by gojomo » Thu, May 06, 2021, 10:51 PM UTC

mannerheim wrote: post #273

gojomo wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What useful information does it provide? The potential for surprise & early detection. As your quote noted, most cows are slaughtered earlier, so generations could be infected without any detection. If you only test 5yo symptomatic cows, you can never find an outbreak until it's too late, or anything that contradicts the breezy reassurances of the industry-captured USDA. Again, it's like when the CDC & Fauci were a…

> As your quote noted, most cows are slaughtered earlier, so generations could be infected without any detection. They couldn't be detected by those tests anyway if they don't have symptoms, or at least not until shortly before symptoms become apparent. > Again, it's like when the CDC & Fauci were assuring people that there was no significant community COVID spread when they were also blocking any testing that could…

> They couldn't be detected by those tests anyway if they don't have symptoms, or at least not until shortly before symptoms become apparent.

Your topmost comment mentioned tests can detect BSE "2-3 months before" symptoms. That'd catch more than waiting for symptoms - especially if done broadly! Waiting for symptoms, when the window-of-detection is so small & so late-in-life, & most cows slaughtered young, seems designed for entities that "would rather not know".

> Most importantly COVID tests can detect if you have COVID even when asymptomatic, but BSE tests cannot detect BSE before it is symptomatic.

This contradicts the explicit 2-3 months before symptoms claim you made previously. Also, being less restrictive about testing could create the necessary market for more sensitive tests. If a cow can have it its full life, but it only reaches detectable levels after years, maybe tests can eventually detect the early presence.

> First, the testing is of symptomatic cows, not asymptomatic cows, and it is deliberately not a random sample, but a sample of the population that is most likely to have it.

Exactly! There's zero testing where it wouldn't already be suspected. So no chance to discover a problem early, or challenge the assumptions limiting testing.

> Second, my point is that the lack of any cases of young people with vCJD in the US, let alone widespread cases, indicates that it simply isn't the case that we have some phantom population of cows with BSE that are being let through by the USDA.

Indeed, but the correlate of that is that the regime you're advocating can thus only detect a problem after a bunch of atypical, or weven "widespread", cases are noticed. That's the signal you're waiting for, before testing more.

That approach sucked for COVID, it'll suck for BSE.