France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

Post by JohnBooty » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

pygy_ wrote: post #243

knicholes wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contraction or portmanteau?

Contraction : A portmanteau word is similar to a contraction, but contractions are formed from words that would otherwise appear together in sequence, such as do and not to make don't, whereas a portmanteau is formed by combining two or more existing words that all relate to a single concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmanteau "Motel" and "fog" are portmanteaus, because you wouldn't put "motor hotel" or "smoke…

    "Motel" and "fog" are portmanteaus, because you 
    wouldn't put "motor hotel" or "smoke fog"

    "Motel" and "smog" are portmanteaus, because you 
    wouldn't put "motor hotel" or "smoke fog"

Post by sjg007 » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 8:01 PM UTC

cstross wrote: post #240

teknopaul wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalop... Wikipedia thinks otherwise. The whole UK population was eating mad cow for years until humans started dying. It was well known in advance that this was a crazy callous risk taken by uk.gov Careful what you read, the UK spend a lot of money on propaganda at the time (to support beef exports) until the case was well and truly lost.

Bear in mind that eating muscle tissue from infected animals is a much lower risk than innoculating yourself directly with brain matter from an infected animal. The prion protein is expressed in the central nervous system, which isn't legal for human consumption. Also, ingestion of meat exposes it to stomach acid and digestive enzymes before it gets into the consumer's circulation -- enzymes that break down foreign p…

Post by spfzero » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 8:21 PM UTC

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #9

The study of rare, contagious diseases seems likely enough to result in an eventual outbreak that it should be treated like enriching uranium. Which is to say, with great caution- and not like regular science but rather like the kind of science with potentially very negative externalities.

Post by rcxdude » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 8:26 PM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #105

marcodiego wrote: post #30

Scary. I think and airborne human transmissible prion disease that kill in a few years is the kind of event that can bring our society back to prehistoric living in just a few decades. Hope it never happens.

I find prions unbelievably scary too. What reassures me is that they've had about 3 billion years to wipe out life on earth and haven't done it yet. Which means there must be some natural limits on their spread we don't know about yet.

Post by vkou » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #175

dekhn wrote: post #56

Prions are weird. I was at UCSF during the time they went from a fringe theory to an established fact and a nobel prize. The professor who studied them (Prusiner) had to overcome tons of resistance and the experiments were heroic (often waiting months for mice to die). It's really funny that everybody resisted it until somebody mentioned that there was a plausible physical mechanism of refolding catalysis.

Is it because many researchers put their ego first over the science? It's so many times that they ridicule ideas, that often amounts to bullying and then they rarely even say sorry when it turns out they were wrong. Why won't academia flush out these types of people? The toxic atmosphere with no way of getting rid of bad apples is what put me off from studying.