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France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

sciencemag.org

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Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#181

Post by FreeFull »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #87
choeger wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There must be some kind of counter-agent, or life as we know it would not exist.

To prion diseases? Mainly in that they're not that common, more like a weird aberration than something that actively fights and adapts for its own survival like bacteria and viruses. I mean cancer is not contagious, but it still kills millions a year.

Strictly speaking, contagious cancer is a thing, but not in humans. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canine_transmissible_venereal_...

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#182

Post by jessaustin »

inglor_cz wrote: post #146
triceratops wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Terror" is the point of "terrorism". It's in the word.

Point of terrorism is achieving a political change through terror. Terror is not the end in itself. From this point of view, mailing of anthrax in 2001 was very inefficient.

We need to expand the set of possible actors and goals. The anthrax campaign happened immediately after 9/11. The result of the campaign was the end of effective political opposition to the massive expansion of military and "secret" aspects of the USA government made possible by 9/11. Cui bono? Certainly not the several implausible patsies the authorities immediately had lined up to blame.

Numerous USA calamities make a lot more sense when we study them with an eye toward who benefits rather than who is blamed.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#183

Post by subroutine »

Aqueous wrote: post #102
relax88 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this even possible? By what mechanism could a prion disease become airborne? Viruses have evolved to more easily infect cells in the respiratory tract for this specific purpose, but prions are much less sophisticated. It seems there may be some evidence they can evolve, but enough to hijack cellular machinery in such a way that they could increase the concentration in the respiratory tract enough to transmit? Seem…

This article from 2011 suggests aerosol transmission in mice: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020930/

To attenuate fears a bit... Aerosol transmission was proven possible if you're sitting inside a vapor inhalation chamber equipped with a nebulizer spraying out liquid droplets containing >2% w/v brain homogenates from terminally scrapie-sick mice.

Rest assured if you somehow get infected by PrPSc through airborne transmission, someone was trying really hard to make that happen.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#184

Post by croddin »

I wonder if it would be possible to make a designer protein that latches onto prion “seed crystals” to neutralize it. Some of the recent advances in protein folding and crispr make it so this might be starting to be something in the realm of possibility.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#185

Post by jjk166 »

fabiospampinato wrote: post #147
jamespwilliams wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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")

What things are named and what they are don't necessarily coincide. E.g.: native americans are called "indians".

But typically they do, and this is one of that vast majority of cases.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#186

Post by jjk166 »

gostsamo wrote: post #68
LatteLazy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't prions reproduce by re-folding other proteins to match themselves?

Infection means contamination / spoilage. https://www.etymonline.com/word/infection

Prions contaminate

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#187

Post by missedthecue »

zzbzq wrote: post #148
missedthecue wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a nitpick, but "negative externality" isn't a synonym for "bad things happening". It describes a market transaction which inherently imposes costs on an unrelated third party. For instance, a steel mill producing rolling stock to sell me releases sulfur into the air that dirties your property, imposing a cost on you. Prion research doesn't necessarily impose costs on anyone.

It's not a nitpick, it's just wrong. Bad things happening is a cost which is both negative and external. The use of the term "negative externality" works here.

Negative externality is an economic term which describes a specific market failure. A research lab leak (or nuclear meltdown, or whatever) is a rare accident, not a negative externality.

It would be like me saying the theory of relativity just means a theory about how everything is relative. That's obviously wrong. You can't just break down academic terms into their separate words. It doesn't make sense.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#188

Post by l30n4da5 »

knownjorbist wrote: post #154
echelon wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When lab workers studying the very thing they know best can make lethal mistakes, it's surprising that so many jumped to quell any hypothesis of a covid lab leak. Scientists make mistakes all the time. They're human. Imagine all of the mistakes you make in your job. Outages. Stupid bugs. It's the same with any profession.

You are conflating lab leak with intentionally crafted bioweapon.

> You are conflating lab leak with intentionally crafted bioweapon.

> intentionally crafted bioweapon

they didn't mention anything about that anywhere.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#189

Post by sigstoat »

RalfWausE wrote: post #155

My horror vision after clicking the link: Imagine this merges with covid and the whole John Titor fluff becomes instantly more realistic...

> Imagine this merges with covid

imagine the terminator and the alien merge!

that's not how anything works.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#190

Post by jjk166 »

XorNot wrote: post #120
dekhn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because the underlying data demonstrated that there was a statistically significant death effect occurring, with a wide range of evidence implicating prions, before there was a mechanism. You shouldn't require a plausible mechanism to trust your experiments (seen this a hundred times, like in RNA enzymes, heart of the ribosome, various dna-is-the-heritable-agent experimetns).

Yes you should: because all you have otherwise is a death rate that could be caused by any number of things. Biological organisms die all the time for all sorts of reasons: there's a difference between showing a series of factors lead to an death rate, and proposing the specific mechanism by which that happens and it's important . That light behaves like a wave did not summarily prove there was an aether through whic…

Clearly you do not need to know the mechanism by which light waves propagate to prove that light waves do propagate. It would be ass-backwards to wait until special relativity was formulated to accept the existence of electromagnetic waves.
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