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This week, I'm not giving you a choice.

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I'm going right into the bad news.

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I came across this article and I think that it's just bad news that needs to be shared.

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Well, that's not fair.

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That's my domain.

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I know you have a category of news that needs to be shared.

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And that's my only category.

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So I don't have a category for that.

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I have bad news, but I'm jumping right to this bad news article because it's news that

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needs to be shared.

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It's not its own category just to be clear.

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I'm not stealing from Taylor.

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This is from The Guardian and it was posted December 22nd, 2023.

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Fairly recent and it is titled Zombie Deer Disease.

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Epidemic spreads in Yellowstone.

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A scientist raised fears it may jump to humans.

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This has come up in an episode before too.

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I just can't remember which one.

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Did it come up in an episode?

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I know we've talked about it.

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Which is why I brought it up because I know I've read some stuff about chronic wasting

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disease.

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Yeah, prions.

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Yeah, so I've read something about it and then you told me that's what it was because

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it was just an article about a deer acting really weird.

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So I was like, listen to this.

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It's really cool and you told me about this.

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So that's why I wanted to read it.

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So when the mule deer buck died in October, it perished in a place most humans would

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consider the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest road.

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At its last breath, we're not taken in an isolated corner of American geography.

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It succumbed to a long dreaded disease in the back country of Yellowstone National Park,

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Northwest Wyoming, the first confirmed case of chronic wasting disease in the country's

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most famous nature reserve.

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For years, chronic wasting disease in brackets CWD, of course, we've got to make it an acronym,

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caused by prions, abnormal transmissible pathogenic agents.

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I said that really good.

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Good job me.

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I'm off to a great start today.

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This is going to be a great day.

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It's been spreading stealthily across North America with concerns voiced primarily by

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hunters after spotting deer behaving strangely.

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The prions caused changes in the host's brain and nervous system, leaving animals drooling,

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lethargic, emaciated, stumbling with a telltale blank stare that led some to call it zombie

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deer disease.

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It spreads through the Servid family, deer elk, moose, caribou, and reindeer.

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It is fatal with no known treatments or vaccines.

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This discovering Yellowstone, whose ecosystem supports the greatest and most diverse array

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of large wild mammals in the continental US, represents an important public wake-up call,

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says Dr. Thomas Rof, a vet and former chief of animal health for the Fish and Wildlife

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Service at US Federal Agency.

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This case put CWD on the radar of widespread attention in ways it wasn't before, and that's

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ironically a good thing, he says.

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It's a disease that has huge ecological implications.

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Rof has been predicting CWD would reach Yellowstone for decades, warning that both the federal

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government and the state of Wyoming needed to take aggressive measures to help slow it

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spread.

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Those warnings went largely in heated, he said, and now the consequences will play out

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before millions who visit the park each year.

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The area constitutes a vast laboratory for observing what happens when CWD infiltrates

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an ecosystem with its original full complement of biological diversity.

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Hundreds of thousands of elk and deer move through Yellowstone, supporting populations

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of grizzly bears, wolves, cougars, coyotes, and other scavengers.

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The disease is a slow-moving disaster, according to Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist

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who studied the outbreak of bovine spondiform encephalopathy.

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Encephalopathy.

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Yeah, or Macau disease.

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Encephalopathy.

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A related prion condition in the UK and is director- it is?

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Yeah, pretty much as far as we're concerned, all prions are basically the same thing.

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They just impact different proteins.

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In the UK and is director of Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University

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of Minnesota, Dr. Corey Anderson recently earned his doctorate studying with Osterholm

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focusing on pathways of CWD transmission, what we're dealing with a disease that is

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invariably fatal, incurable, and highly contagious.

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What's leaked into the worry is that we don't have an effective, easy way to eradicate

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it, neither from the animals it infects nor the environment it contaminates.

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Once an environment is infected, the pathogen is extremely hard to eradicate.

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It can persist for years in dirt or on surfaces and scientists report it is resistant to disinfectants

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for meldehyde radiation and incineration at 600 Celsius.

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Wow.

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In the US and Canada, CWD has gained attention not only because it affects big game animals,

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but also because of the possibility that it could jump the species barrier.

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Dear Elk and Moose could infect livestock, other mammals, birds, or even humans.

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Epidemiologists say the absence of the spillover case yet does not mean that it won't happen.

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CWD is one of a cluster of fatal neurological disorders that includes BSE.

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BSE, Mad Cow, Outbreak in Britain, provided an example of how overnight things can get

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crazy with the spillover event happens from, say, livestock to people, Anderson says.

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We're talking about the potential of something similar occurring.

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No one is saying that it's definitely going to happen, but it's important for people

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to be prepared.

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Dr. Rayna Plowrout, a disease ecologist at Cornell University, says CWD should be viewed

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against a backdrop of dangerous emerging zoonotic, zoonotic, pathogens that are moving back

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and forth across species barrier between humans, livestock, and wildlife globally.

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Things occur as human settlements and agricultural operations press deeper into environments where

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contact with disease-carrying animals is increasing.

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With the hunting season underway in the US and US Centers for Disease Control and Individual

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State strongly recommend that harvested game animals be tested for disease and that meat

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for cervids that appear ill should not be consumed.

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Chelsea, do you know much about prions?

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I know I don't, but I have a rough understanding of them.

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But kind of, I know that it makes the max super crazy.

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It would be scary to see, but I think if you want to share the knowledge, because I think

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you, the limited knowledge you have is more than I have.

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Most diseases we know are either viral or bacterial.

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You're aware of those words, right?

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Bacteria, very much so a living organism that is infected the species.

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We kill it with antibiotics, anti-living thing.

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Viruses, it's kind of a gray area or whether technically they're alive or not, but we can

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treat them with some different medicines.

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Prions don't really meet the definition at all of a living organism.

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They're basically just a single strand of protein that has changed its shape from what

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you would normally expect.

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And when it comes into contact with other proteins, it changes their shape as well.

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Because it's not alive, we don't really know how to treat these things or how to stop them

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or even when they'll necessarily jump the species barrier because it's just proteins.

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So that's why these things are so terrifying is because they're definitely not a living

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thing.

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They're literally just a single protein, which we're made up of proteins.

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Like that's basically all we are.

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Okay.

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If it comes into contact with your protein, suddenly your proteins aren't the right shape

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for what they're supposed to do.

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Okay, that makes sense.

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And it spreads throughout your body.

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So this is like, well, they already said it, it's like a zombie disease.

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Yeah, more or less, it's going to completely change your nervous system and basically all

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the cells it comes into contact with.

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Well, that's terrifying.

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DNA at the end of the day is made up of just amino acids and proteins.

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So yeah, I might have known that.

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Yeah.

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And there is a form of prion disease in humans is called Crutsfeld Jacob disease, basically

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the human equivalent of mad cow.

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I have no idea if these are different prions that instigate all of these, and that is the

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limit of what I understand about prions is that that's why they're so hard to actually

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treat.

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Okay.

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Because we don't know how to stop something that's not living.

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Yeah.

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Or how to stop them from realigning your proteins as well.

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So hence why it's in the bad news category.

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Yeah.

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This article does go on.

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It talks about people feeding wildlife in settings like this, which is contributing to what's

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going on, which I'm quite familiar with.

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I mean, most people would be quite familiar with if you live anywhere in your nature,

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you shouldn't be feeding wildlife.

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As far as this disease goes, it's scary from seeing how animal, I mean, they act really

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unnaturally when they're infected with this type of thing.

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Is it an infection?

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Now I don't even know.

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I guess technically this disease.

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They called it a disease in the article.

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Yeah.

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When they have this disease, they act really, I mean, they're not acting dear like at all.

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And it's super creepy, which is where I heard about it in the first place.

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It was on like a paranormal subgroup that someone was talking about a deer acting unnaturally,

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which I agree would be super creepy, but poor animals.

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As far as I know, I've only heard about it in three species, humans, cows and deer.

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I'm sure there's more out there, but those three seem to be the most concerning.

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And I've never heard of it, man, a bird.

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No, but they got their own thing going on.

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Maybe birds don't have proteins because they're not real.

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Yeah, that's a fair point.

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They're specifically metal, which actually helps out the birds are real.

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Categorical.

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And on that note, that's as far as we're legally allowed to actually talk about that topic

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now.

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So thank you all for listening.

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We will change the topic in 48 hours.

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Goodbye.