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<div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Mad cow disease is weird in a couple of ways. Many organic molecules twist themselves into a particular geometry. <br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">In many cases, it is possible for the exact same molecule to be folded in a different shape. Then it behaves differently.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Mad cow disease can happen spontaneously. Some molecule somehow gets itself twisted in the wrong way. Then it touches other molecules and some of them twist around.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">During the mad cow problems of the late 1990's ranchers had a hard time understanding that their cattle which had never been off the ranch could still be suspect.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Bacteria in food can be killed by exposure cooking. Not so mad cow molecules.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">The wife of a friend started having memory problems. It was diagnosed as <span>Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. She was dead in less than a year.</span><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><span>Creutzfeldt–Jakob</span><br></div><div><br></div>
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On Sunday, May 3, 2020, 8:22:57 PM PDT, Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> wrote:
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<div>Quoting Alex Kleider (<a shape="rect" href="mailto:akleider@sonic.net" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">akleider@sonic.net</a>):<br clear="none"><br clear="none">> I have a vague memory of at one time learning that mad cow disease<br clear="none">> is a slow virus affecting the central nervous system and that a<br clear="none">> human needs to eat infected bovine central nervous system to<br clear="none">> contract the disease.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Actually 'mad cow disease' (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) is the<br clear="none">action of certain _prions_, which are probably the only pathogen class<br clear="none">weirder than viruses, in large part because while viruses are arguably<br clear="none">not alive in the first place, prions pretty _definitely_ aren't (by any<br clear="none">reasonable definition): They're misshaped protein molecules that, in<br clear="none">animals, cause fatal neurodegenerative diseases.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">When those _same_ misshapen molecules screw up human nervous systems,<br clear="none">that's called Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. It's thoroughly horrible; you<br clear="none">want to be very far from it. There are neither treatments nor cures,<br clear="none">and, once symptoms start appearing, sometimes after an incubation period<br clear="none">of 5-20 years, the patient unravels neurologically, leading to brain<br clear="none">death.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Cheery thought, eh?<br clear="none"><br clear="none">But it leads to one of my favourite disease-themed jokes: During the<br clear="none">United Kingdom BSE outbreak of the 1990s, two Guernsey cows in County<br clear="none">Kent were discussing the morning newspaper (as they do). One of them<br clear="none">said to the other: 'Say, aren't you worried about mad-cow disease,<br clear="none">then?'<br clear="none"><br clear="none">The other smiled and said 'Of course not. I'm a squirrel.'<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">> Presumably meat gets contaminated by the CNS during slaughter but it<br clear="none">> isn't primarily the meat.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Well, that's the catch, isn't it? The UK epidemic was caused by the<br clear="none">then-widespread practice of feeding cows a high-protein feed supplement<br clear="none">called meat-and-bone meal (MBM) that contained the remains of other<br clear="none">animals, which happened to include.... class? class? Bueller? the<br clear="none">processed remains of cattle who had spontaneously developed BSE, plus<br clear="none">that of sheep infected with scrapie, a related prion-based degenerative<br clear="none">nervous disease, and the key error was careless inclusion of brain and<br clear="none">spinal cord tissue in said feed.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">With good reason, the consequences of this inexcusable blunder included,<br clear="none">along with 177 human deaths, European Union blanket-banning all British<br clear="none">beef for a decade.<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">> It's probably a good policy to not eat CNS tissue from any animal.<br clear="none">> CNS- Central Nervous System: Brain and spinal cord.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Word. ;-><div class="ydp5c5447e9yqt1779579978" id="ydp5c5447e9yqtfd24476"><br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">_______________________________________________<br clear="none">conspire mailing list<br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="mailto:conspire@linuxmafia.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">conspire@linuxmafia.com</a><br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire</a><br clear="none"></div></div>
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