Prions more mobile than thought
Disease agents can jump from one species to another
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/337970/title/Prions_more_mobile_than_thought
For those of you who don’t know what prions are, they are protein molecules in the brain (they are in other parts of the body, but ‘infections’ there don’t have such a negative impact) that cause other similar proteins as themselves to spontaneously change form into a useless shape (protein function depends almost exclusively on the location of a few select amino acids within a highly defined three dimensional structure, damage that structure in any way and almost certainly the protein can no longer accomplish its intended function). Prions are not destroyed by cooking (but are by incineration), unlike bacteria, fungi or viral infections. Further, the length of time between being ‘infected’ (infection implies, to me anyway, some sort of reproductive organism, which this ain’t) and evincing symptoms might be years or even decades (somewhat like HIV/AIDS in this). Fortunately, it seems that it is only transmitted by eating ‘infected’ food (and only animal-based food at that), so it would seem that vegans are safe and if we can keep it out of our food chain, we as a population can be safe. Unfortunately, it seems, according the article, that more tissues besides that from brain and nerves can serve as ‘host’ to the ‘infection’ and no one is monitoring those tissues. Also, it would also seem from the article that more organisms are capable of transmitting the disease than initially thought, so we might be in for some deep shit in the future.
So, bottom line: you can’t do a damn thing about it so just ignore this unless you are pining for reasons to lie awake at night worrying about things you can’t change. Besides, we all gonna die anyway, so whats the worry?
