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When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

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Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#151

Post by tn135 »

justboxing wrote: post #66
touchofevil wrote: post #23

I did a bunch of research (googling) back in the late 90's or 2000s when the mad cow disease outbreak first happened mainly in England. I thought it was pretty terrifying and I wanted to know what the hell was going on. I read about Kuru all the way back then and the take away was that people shouldn't eat the brain and nervous tissue of other people or Kuru could result. But also it seemed that mad cow disease was o…

> The AMR process entails blasting off that meat stuck to the spine and skull with some kind of high pressure for use in ground meat. This is true. A while back, I read stories of how (Mostly low-wage Mexican) Workers at Meat Plants were getting a strange neurological disease that confounded their doctors. The cause was then traced to them inhaling the aerosol of the Animals' brains being blown out, mostly Pigs. Rela…

I even remember watching an interesting X-files episode about this.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#152

Post by selestify »

cyan_atrus wrote: post #99
scythe wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot copy "all" of the information stored in the human body. Briefly, this happens because the physical limitations of information storage require cooling (Landauer's principle) which requires kT×log(2) energy per bit, or about 2.5 zJ at room temperature. The brain's memory capacity is about 2.5 * 10^15 bytes ( https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memor... ), but the amount of information whic…

this is a really cool comment -- thank you! -- do you have any more reading you can link to?

Same, would love to read more about this!

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#153

Post by literallycancer »

touchofevil wrote: post #23

I did a bunch of research (googling) back in the late 90's or 2000s when the mad cow disease outbreak first happened mainly in England. I thought it was pretty terrifying and I wanted to know what the hell was going on. I read about Kuru all the way back then and the take away was that people shouldn't eat the brain and nervous tissue of other people or Kuru could result. But also it seemed that mad cow disease was o…

The Wikipedia article on Kuru mentions some people developing immunity to it in the most affected areas. Very interesting.

In 2009, researchers at the Medical Research Council discovered a naturally occurring variant of a prion protein in a population from Papua New Guinea that confers strong resistance to kuru. In the study, which began in 1996,[21] researchers assessed over 3,000 people from the affected and surrounding Eastern Highland populations, and identified a variation in the prion protein G127.[22] G127 polymorphism is the result of a missense mutation, and is highly geographically restricted to regions where the kuru epidemic was the most widespread. Researchers believe that the PrnP variant occurred very recently, estimating that the most recent common ancestor lived 10 generations ago.[22][23]

Of the discovery, Professor John Collinge, director of the MRC’s Prion Unit at University College London, has stated that:

It's absolutely fascinating to see Darwinian principles at work here. This community of people has developed their own biologically unique response to a truly terrible epidemic. The fact that this genetic evolution has happened in a matter of decades is remarkable.

— John Collinge, Medical Research Council The findings of the study could help researchers better understand and develop treatments for other related prion diseases, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease[21] and Alzheimer’s disease.[24]

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#154

Post by mcguire »

Razengan wrote: post #119
scythe wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot copy "all" of the information stored in the human body. Briefly, this happens because the physical limitations of information storage require cooling (Landauer's principle) which requires kT×log(2) energy per bit, or about 2.5 zJ at room temperature. The brain's memory capacity is about 2.5 * 10^15 bytes ( https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memor... ), but the amount of information whic…

Copying a disk does in no way require simulating each atom of the disk, though? • We can already clone mammalian bodies. • I'll assume that "growing" an adult human body, with a "blank" or "default" brain, isn't too inconceivable. • Your real, natural brain can access the information within itself. • At the moment of "copying", we figure some way to biologically link the two brains together, and write some biological…

Given the focus of other responders on copying, I'd just like to point out that

"I'll assume that "growing" an adult human body, with a "blank" or "default" brain, isn't too inconceivable."

is problematic as well.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#155

Post by tray5 »

goatlover wrote: post #9

Is it certain this came from cannibalism and not infected pigs?

Yes, very certainly. When the cannibalism stopped, so did instances of Kuru. Although you can get Prion diseases from eating infected pig brain and nervous tissue, the instances discussed in the article were solely caused by ritual cannibalism.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#156

Post by mcguire »

yblu wrote: post #87
XFrequentist wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nature cares not a whit about "species".

All things equal. Specie A (with this disease) stop cannibalizing after seeing the outcome, better chance of survival. Specie B (without this disease) eat themselves to the last person... Lower chance of survival as a specie. Nature "cares" by generating lots of options, then let the fittest to survive. So while nature doesn't intend or plan for a specie to survive, the outcome is no different from if it did. I belie…

"Specie B (without this disease) eat themselves to the last person... Lower chance of survival as a specie."

That seems unlikely. A bigger risk would be a carnivorous species exterminating its prey species.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#157

Post by mcguire »

finid wrote: post #24

For the past months I've been seriously considering starting a theme restaurant that served wild meats - deer, hogs, gators, large constrictors, etc. That idea just went out the window.

Around here, deer meat is illegal to sell. You would probably have to farm the meats.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#158

Post by uzoodoo »

irisli wrote: post #104
DiThi wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a deductive fallacy. Alive things need resources, but things that need resources are not necessarily alive.

computerphage wasn't using deduction but rather contraposition. (A -> B) => (!B -> !A). The absurdity of (!B -> !A) shows that (A -> B) is not true for all cases.

But the premise "not alive => doesn't need resources" is false because there exist things are "not necessarily alive" that need resources. Therefore, the argument is invalid.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#159

Post by Retra »

nimchimpsky wrote: post #146
mseebach wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you've killed the animal, don't you owe it to eat as much as possible of it? Isn't it a bigger sin to throw away edible meat for aesthetic reasons?

well yeah, but getting sprayed with spinal column aerosol in your mouth isn't exactly appetising, was the point.

That's not something you have to do to eat meat. Just something to consider if you want to sell it.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#160

Post by pvg »

ajnin wrote: post #125
pvg wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"All cats die. Socrates is dead. Therefore Socrates is a cat."

No. Mirroring the parent would be : "All cats die. Socrates is immortal. Therefore Socrates is not a cat." Which is perfectly valid logic.

I'll let Eugène Ionesco know.
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