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Has there been any research on Prions as a bio-terrorism weapon? It sounds like you could infect thousands/millions and have a close to 100% death-rate without anyone noticing until many years after the contamination started. Imaging contaminating food/drinking water with the Prion which causes Kuru [1] for example. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)
bio-terrorism is not effective.
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I've always thought a _very_ effective strategy would be to get a crop-duster and spray a prion-contaminated mist over a major city, basically contaminating every public surface in a large area I'm also not sure how you would begin to clean up afterwards - do you remove the surface of everything in your city? To those saying bio-terrorism is ineffective or would not kill a lot of people in any appreciable time-scale,…
It's not really effective because it takes years to manifest symptoms of prion disease. Terrorism usually has a message attached to it, and "you're gonna start dying in 10 years" is not conducive to messaging.
From Wikipedia [1]: « Prions are misfolded proteins with the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal variants of the same protein. They characterize several atal and transmissible neuro degenerative diseases in humans and many other animals. It is not known what causes the normal protein to misfold, but the abnormal three-dimensional structure is suspected of conferring infectious properties, collapsing…
Avoid cannibalism and you should be fine.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/09/06/482952588/wh...
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> Why does every lab have to be shut down for 3 months? Auditing everyone and their processes takes a while.
Why would you audit processes when the allegation is that someone got infected because she wasn't following the processes?
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But wasn't there an issue before of prion contamination with surgical instruments used in ophtalmic surgery. I am sure those would have been autoclaved and reprocessed at some ridiculous pH value, no?
yeah I wouldn't count on prions being as easily denatured as other proteins. E.g. mad cow disease spread because prions are not killed by simply cooking / boiling it.
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“Never been shown to” is the kind of false speak I keep hearing from the government and media. Just because you’ve never tried it doesn’t mean you have shown something.
There is a difference between "never been shown to" and "shown to never".
Could a cure be to stop proteosynthesis of the prion-protein? https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/prions-ar... "This protein, in its healthy, properly-folded state, is, if not trivial, relatively unimportant. Its complete loss is certainly not catastrophic." I have no idea how to block proteosynthesis of a single protein in humans, maybe more biologically attuned HN:ners can comment what it would mean…
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"infect" is not the right word. Prions are not viruses, they do not replicate, they ravage other proteins in their surroundings by misfolding them over and over again until it becomes a fatal pathology.
The word "prion" is actually a contraction of the words "protein" and "infection". (edit: although I agree it's not what one might conventionally think of as an "infection")
Hm: "long period of uncertainty began on 31 May 2010, when she stabbed her left thumb with a curved forceps while cleaning a cryostat—a machine that can cut tissues at very low temperatures—that she used to slice brain sections from transgenic mice infected with a sheep-adapted form of BSE . She pierced two layers of latex gloves and drew blood" Later in the article: ""We conduct research only on mouse-adapted sheep…
Who knows really. 10 years is a long time to wait and worry, but it can take up to 50 years to express itself. Just imagine spending your whole life worrying about this.
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> Why does every lab have to be shut down for 3 months? Auditing everyone and their processes takes a while.
Why would you audit processes when the allegation is that someone got infected because she wasn't following the processes?
What could change to make it more likely that the process would be followed? Could we put signs all around places with prion research? Could we implement a buddy system whenever we work with prions? Do metal gloves need to be hung in visible place throughout the lab? Do we keep containers of bleach accessible for when someone pricks their finger? Do we have enough of them and are they visible enough?