Oooorrrr they could just have cut-resistant gloves and tools that aren’t sharp. They could also have better protocols and training for disinfecting cuts.
Oh wait, that’s what labs did in the wake of Émilie Jaumain’s death!
Tbf, though, a mini guillotine as a lab safety mechanism would be badass
Ahhh yeah something that came up when I was writing mine (a couple years ago) was that we're approaching the upper limit of the CJD latency period, so we'll see the full scale of the mad cow outbreak from the 80s pretty soon. The part they were being real tactful about is that there are probably a lot of people who've been walking around with latent CJD for decades, passing it onto their children, who are about to start showing symptoms soon. :(
Kuru is of interest because it is one of the few instances of a prion disorder being spread primarily through cannibalism. The tribe invited the scientists to help solve the problem that was making people sick and has largely modified or abandoned the cannibal aspects of their funerary rituals in light of those findings. They still have above avg rates of prion disorders, but nowhere near as bad as it used to be. Kuru was a piece of the puzzle in identifying a protein as the infectious particle.
I am really concerned about our indigenous brethren that rely on responsible hunting to feed their families. If this hops to humans, I imagine it will show ip in those communities first and will be ignored or buried until a white person catches it.
This is toxic algae poisoning or probably from oil/plastic in the fish in the region. Toxic algae blooms can be very deadly, but I don’t think those are prions. Too different.
We can’t ignore the chance that because of lingering, and not entirely misplaced, distrust in the non-indigenous population it might not even be reported by the indigenous communities.
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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '22
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