#vCJD

[oh-yes-i-did-not]

Okay so for those either too young to remember or who were alive during but it never really affected them based on where they lived, Mad Cow Disease

Mad Cow Disease was thing in the late 80′s and the entire 90′s, all the way to early 00′s and it was an international scare. Like, we had disinfecting stations on international airports because of it.

It was a virus passed from animals to humans and this didn’t happen somewhere random in Asia, where, idk, bats and pigs interact and infect the food chain, but in Europe. In UK to be precise.

It affected only cows at first and only agriculture paid any attention, since any animal infected needed to be put down. Like no shit, those animals couldn’t even walk with how bad they were shaking and if you want to google this, be prepared. It doesn’t look nice, it looks ugly and horrifying and it will likely traumatize someone.

And the mode of transfer was not evident. There are videos and photos, showing cow carcasses being burned and someone trying to claim that was early days but that was very much not the reality in the beginning. In fact, all the research showed it is not possible for Mad Cow Disease to infect humans. In fact2, a similar disease was already known in lambs for decades and that one could not infect humans, so it was a no brainer to say, a similar disease in cows can also NEVER infect humans, so no precautions with the carcass needed.

But the thing is, how we processed meat had changed drastically between the lambs being a stable, grown at home meat, and then cows, or beef, becoming dominant with supermarkets. This is basically the “you see this, this is animal paste from a teletubby machine” video, except the paste wasn’t fed to humans. It’s known as meat and bone meal and it was all the leftover stuff from abattoirs, ground up and fed back to the animals as valuable protein.

You might see where this is going.

So let’s talk about prion diseases.

Well, as much as I, a random person know about them. Prions are proteins and proteins are not DNA or RNA, which are most likely familiar to anyone who has googled Covid, or any novel corona viruses in general. They’re the viruses a vaccine is made for.

Prion diseases are, in fact, mostly known because of cannibalism. Kuru is a famous disease among one specific tribe on Pacific Islands, caused by their tradition of consuming their relatives flesh after death. In fact, I just fact checked on which ocean and was told that the Kuru was mainly affecting kids and women because the men ate limbs and muscles and women and kids got the brain and basically all the best, fatty parts. Which, ironically, carried the disease.

And yes, in any survivalist culture fat, innards, and cartilage and the “bad parts” are the best because they contain the most nutrients so no, you do no get to twist this into the men taking the best, so fuck of terfs. This post is not for you.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease was already known by the time of Mad Cow Disease, it was a brain destroying disease affecting the elderly population. Mad Cow became variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, or vCJD and was picked up because it mainly affected the young.

And in case you didn’t get it already, the link was infected cow carcasses being processed to meat and bone meal to be fed back to cows, because infected prion diseases spread through cannibalism. Or more specifically, spine and brain stem.

(so you’re relatively safe eating just the thigh or any muscle tbh)

So in the end, Mad Cow Disease didn’t kill that many people, only few hundreds, if I recall correctly.

But the thing that was found out about the prion diseases because of Kuru was that while some people exhibited symptoms and died really early, most had an incubation period of DECADES, aka 50 years. So the inevitable conclusion about vCJD is that it has only claimed it’s first victims and that majority are still waiting to appear and die.

Because the thing about prion diseases? There is currently no cure. And the fact that no one seems to remember this and that there is no awareness of it is not helping.

[292-ludovica]

are there like. neuropathologists/epidemiologists specialising in proteopathies on here

I crave Information

[an-organized-confusion]

Because med nerd (and watching a video about BSE)...

So. I called the zombie infection in the iZombie AU “ζvCJD-21“.

Just to break that down - the “vCJD“ part is named after “Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease“ AKA “mad cow disease“.

“ζ“ is the lowercase Greek letter “zeta“... because zombies.

Aaand I think you get the naming convention behind the “...D-21“ part. (Outbreak was discovered that year, in this AU.)

But circling back on the main chunk... something I’ve HCd about the zombie infection here... is that if there is a cure to the infection, that it would still leave a sort of spongiform pattern of permanent damage in the brain. But here, specifically, the parts that process taste/smell. (Some can be compensated from rewiring/plasticity, but not 100%.)

(Though if the zombie progresses past Full Romero, the damage is more... diffuse and everywhere. If they stay fed, the agent behind the infection is stopped/slowed from progressing.)

If Logan has the opportunity to do autopsy on a zombie - that can be the histological findings (under the microscope) in their brain tissue.

(Just thinking of the implications for Team Z here - Janus, Virgil, the twins... and later, unfortunately, the twins’ parents.)

[catgirlwerewolf]

i hate the texture of red meat but i still eat beef in hopes of breaking the uk's 8 year winning streak of no vcjd deaths

[strongermonster]

oh shit. niche post to care about, but canada lifted the blood donation ban on people who visited/were from the uk/ireland/france in the 80's and 90's? i didn't know that, that's so awesome

(november/december 2023)

for context:

"It’s [the ban lift] the result of an update to blood donation eligibility criteria related to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), the human variant of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) ― commonly known as ‘mad cow’ disease. Earlier eligibility criteria prevented people from donating blood, plasma or platelets in Canada if they had lived or spent time in the United Kingdom in the years 1980-1996, or in the Republic of Ireland or France in the years 1980-2001."

this also comes a bit over a year after the lifting of the gay male blood ban in canada as well.

wonderful news considering canada's ongoing blood donation shortages :)

[tanadrin]

based on Maintenance Phase’s short history of the British BSE outbreak, it seems pretty interesting as a situation where basically nobody did anything wrong, but something bad and difficult to foresee still happened

the feeding of bone and organ protein to animals seems basically unproblematic to me. so long as you’re going to eat meat, it seems more environmentally and ethically responsible to get the maximum benefit from each animal you slaughter

CJD-type prion diseases were known in animals before, including i think BSE, but it was long believed that they simply couldn’t cross from one species to another. and not without reason: humans had been eating sheep with scrapie for centuries with no ill health effects, and even transmitting the disease from one animal to another seemed to require a pretty substantial exposure

the UK had been feeding cows protein rendered from cows for a long time with no major problems; as certain protein and tallow-rendering processes got more consolidated over time, small changes in the industrial process that enabled a switch from batch production to continuous production of the protein meal, that had (possibly unbeknownst to anyone? this part wasn’t super clear) been protecting against the spread of BSE stopped working. but based on what we knew about prion diseases in the 80s, this shouldn’t have mattered anyway

except that BSE seems to be uniquely transmissible. even then, it seems to require a certain genetic vulnerability in humans; not everyone is equally susceptible. and it’s not like every burger in the UK was contaminated: the grand total of recorded cases in the UK is 178. unfortunately vCJD, the human form of BSE, is 100% fatal

the British government response could have been better--but it was in line with the general scientific consensus (which was wrong!) in the 80s that this was mostly an agricultural issue, not a public health problem, and the long incubation period made it hard to notice when the disease jumped to humans

tabloids got it right a little bit earlier, and freaked out, but the british tabloids turn everything into a frothing moral panic; this is more a case of a stopped clock being right twice a day than accurate interpretation of the science

and in the real story they’re trying to tell, which is about Oprah Winfrey being sued by a bunch of Texas cattle ranchers, the cattle ranchers seem broadly in the right! Oprah really was whipping up a panic that had no foundation, especially in the American context where there had never been a case of vCJD, and the kind of spread of BSE that happened in Britain was impossible. Oprah really was being irresponsible and even mendacious--but the law she was being sued under was protectionist bullshit, the standard for libel in the US is (correctly) pretty high, and the lawsuit ultimately failed, which was also probably good.

[lafresnaya]

fun fact !!

you can now donate blood in the UK if you've had a a blood transfusion since 1980. before november (2023), this wasn't allowed due to the mad cow / vCJD outbreak that began in 1980.

[somecunttookmyurl]

Please can you explain the BSE thing? I know loads of people who give blood (I can't myself for actual medical reasons) who were in the UK during the BSE outbreak. Surely that would rule out more people over like 30

vCJD (which is what it's called in humans) can lay dormant for decades after exposure so in fact yes it SHOULD rule out all of those people

Unless those people were vegan at the time I guess

But if you were in the UK at any point during the BSE outbreak and consumed any beef or dairy products in that time? There is a small (237 in 1 million if i recall correctly) chance that your brain is just gonna melt at any point

The reason it's taken so seriously is a) it isn't really testable for in blood. not in a screening sort of test in any case and b) vCJD - or any prion disease really - is a fucking nasty way to die. And die you certainly will. The prognosis is "always fatal" and it's also untreatable so all that can be done is making you comfortable for the remaining year or so of your life once symptoms develop

Obv in the UK we can't rule out "everyone who was alive in the 80s and 90s" because that is still the majority of our adult population but like. Everyone else can

Hopefully that clears things up for you! Please do not give blood if you even looked in the general direction of britain whilst thinking about cows in the 80s-90s

[bigweldindustries]

🌻

people who have received a blood transfusion in the UK in the last 45 years can't donate blood in most countries (including, ironically, the UK) because the British blood supply is contaminated with the infective agent that causes mad cow disease (proper name variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease) which in turn remains in the blood of the recipient. We don't really know what the fuck can happen from this due to the disease class vCJD belongs to having pretty long incubation times lmfao. anyway I've had multiple blood transfusions due to coming out of the womb a bit fucked so I have the British Blood Curse

[carbonateddelusion]

and this wouldn't like

give me uhhhhh

what's the disease. vcjd? the one with the prions

would it?

lmao no you're fine

[wastrelwoods]

imagining a world in which people chose to talk about BSE/vCJD in the same way they talk about kuru and made weird misinformed posts about how only isolated backward primitive cultures and crazy suicidal people eat beef because eating beef gives you a special rare illness that melts your brain into mush. oh is it more nuanced than that? is there some kind of deep internalized bias about the boundaries of correct human behavior that’s leading you to mythologize and fearmonger about one illness and not the other?

[oddballextraordinaire]

"few days and counting" - 2023

"FEWHOURSREMAINING" - 2023

Two pieces of tribute art I have made that are based off of vCJD and Milwaukee Protocol by The Patients. If you like hearing music get destroyed in the most chaotic way imaginable then give those two albums a listen if you dare.

[batmanshole]

sometimes i get scared my dad is gonna get vcjd. like its highly unlikely but also he is banned from donating blood bc he was in the uk during the time period where it was common + it can lie dormant for decades

[mla-citation]

the vCJD/british beef crisis is to epidemiologists what 9/11 is to the generic military obsessed guy.

[randomfactsfromcirrus]

Random facts/rants about illnesses!

Rabies is *not* 100% fatal. a handful of people have survived it!

Speaking of rabies, roughly only 1% of bats have rabies, though still be careful!

Opposums rarely actually contract rabies because of low body temperatures!

If you suspect being bit by a rabid animal, go get the shots within 24 hours, 72 if your pushing it, although it can take *years* it can also take days (4 days to 8 years, very wide range) so go get the shot if you got bit by a potentially rabid animal.

You know what is 100% fatal? Prions!

Prions are misfolded proteins that can (and almost certainly will) transform other proteins to also be misfolded

it may take years, but it can and *will* kill you.

it has several names/forms, in Cervidae (deer, moose, elk, reindeer) there's CWD or Chronic wasting disease. in cows its called BSE or Mad cow disease. it can be gotten by cows!

Sheep and Goats (Scrapie), Mink (TME), and Cats (FSE) can all get their own forms as well

If im reading it correctly, all animals can get it? might be reading that wrong lol

Prions are very, very, very hard to kill. you need extreme heat (900f 482c for extended time or higher. go for higher.) and can be frozen for a long while. they can survive out of a living organism.

Humans can get it! there's Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker Syndrome, Fatal Familial Insomnia, Kuru.

most of these you just can get because your body hates you, but Kuru? that's gotten from eating human brains. so uh... don't eat humans? or the brains of any creature really. or do, just don't complain if you get prions!

[labelleizzy]

I can give blood again!