Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, that is 40% household bleach. We could probably make a solution that disinfects faster.
Disinfects a cut thumb faster?
Yes. I wouldn't want to be the one dipping my thumb in 2x household bleach though.
France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes
291–300 of 305 posts
Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes
#292Prions 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.
> everybody resisted it until somebody mentioned that there was a plausible physical mechanism This is a good instinct IMO. Experiments by one person can easily be nonsense, especially if you don't already know and trust that person. Without a physical mechanism, given extraordinary results, I would certainly remain skeptical.
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Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s beyond the point. I am saying this as somebody with type 1 diabetes who has to poke themself with needles to draw blood daily. Her finger most likely got lanced, by a very thin forcep tip. It was never about “severing”.
I think the point was, if you were injected with the prion in a finger, how long would you have to sever that finger to prevent the prion from entering the rest of your body.
Can we call this the "World War Z Problem"?
Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s beyond the point. I am saying this as somebody with type 1 diabetes who has to poke themself with needles to draw blood daily. Her finger most likely got lanced, by a very thin forcep tip. It was never about “severing”.
I think the point was, if you were injected with the prion in a finger, how long would you have to sever that finger to prevent the prion from entering the rest of your body.
I think this article, or another, said that probably applying disinfectant immediately would've been enough.
Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the point was, if you were injected with the prion in a finger, how long would you have to sever that finger to prevent the prion from entering the rest of your body.
I think this article, or another, said that probably applying disinfectant immediately would've been enough.
Prions are not affected by disinfectant
Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes
#296Hm: "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…
“ vCJD or “classic” CJD, which is not known to be caused by prions from animals. Classic CJD strikes an estimated one person per million. Some 80% of cases are sporadic, meaning they have no known cause, ” 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.
Aren't some forms of it contaigous if you come in contact with malformed prions?
Making it a inheritable desease that can afflict others?
Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> the central nervous system, which isn't legal for human consumption. Source? I've seen calf brain on the menu plenty of times.
All sales of beef on the bone was banned too. Even Bovril had to change their recipe for a few years.
The ban was introduced on December 16, 1997, after government advisers reported small risks that small nerve endings near beef bones and bone marrow might be infective. The ban included cuts such rib roasts and oxtail, as well as soups and stock cubes made in Britain from beef bones.
The ban was lifted Tue 29 Nov 1999, but other bans on using as food more risky parts of cattle - brain, eyes, tonsils, spinal cord, spleen and intestines - remained in force, as did ban on use of bones in manufactured food and cattle more than 30 months old are banned from the food chain.
Things have been eased further since 1999 but I'm not sure we can get brain on the menu in the UK...
Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is not an argument. It is extremely plausible because the epidemic started next to the lab. Look at the size of China. Take a map of the country and throw a dart at it. Now consider the probability of it landing within 1 mm of Wuhan. Let's call this dart Occam's fléchette.
> It is extremely plausible because the epidemic started next to the lab. Look at the size of China. Take a map of the country and throw a dart at it. First of all, that seems to completely ignore the uneven distribution of population. Your fléchette assumes a uniform distribution. Yes, China is large, but Wuhan has a population of...what, ten million people? It's China's ninth largest city as per https://en.wikipedi…
Those are terrible, terrible arguments. I'm not making a rigorous demonstration, I'm putting forth a Feynman-style back of the envelope approximation. MY argument is about plausibility. You're attacking it for not being rigorous. That is pure strawmanning. But let's address it anyway:
> First of all, that seems to completely ignore the uneven distribution of population
Half of China (the North Western part) is mostly a desert, almost all of its population is located in the South Western half. For my argument, that means you just need to cut my allegorical map in two before you throw my virtual dart. Big deal.
> where it is argued that in large cities, you have a much greater chance of getting a pandemics from a small number of cases.
Count the number of the large cities in China. There are a lot. See there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China
From that same article: there are 102 cities governed by People's Republic of China with an "urban area" population of over 1 million.
Change my hypothetical map to a square grid of 102 cells. Wuhan is rather large at 11 millions, so make it 10 times bigger than the other ones. Let's not touch Beijing's or Shanghai's square, even though they are bigger. Oh my, that changes everything! Not. Now there is a whopping 10% chance that this happened in Wuhan randomly. Or in other words 90% chance that this is linked to the virology lab.
> I'm also not sure what you mean by "next to the lab". Like right outside of it? I doubt that.
12 km as the crow flies. You can check on Google maps.
Now look at those two maps:
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/D961/production/...
https://www.travelchinaguide.com/images/map/hubei/wuhan-subw...
Line 7 of the Wuhan metro links the two sites directly.
> Hell, we had no idea where the first SARS came from until over a decade later
There is one way, one sure way, one easy way to disprove the lab leak hypothesis. The way that would have been walked months ago had this happened almost ANYWHERE else in the world rather than an authoritarian communist dictatorship: an independent investigation.
But there is no independent investigation. The Chinese régime won't let it happen. Nobody's stopping them from disproving it. If this were a murder investigation, this would be held as evidence of guilt.
Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
Terror only propagates through mass media. Mass media is the issue.
Given that an attack of this sort would be propagated through mass media, then the claim that the attack would be ineffective is wrong.
ineffective to kill millions which was the initial claim.
Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
Don't prions reproduce by re-folding other proteins to match themselves?
they dont replicate.