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Experts: Yes, chronic wasting disease in deer is a public health issue ? for people
By Dave Orrick | Pioneer Press
PUBLISHED: February 7, 2019 at 6:02 pm | UPDATED: February 8, 2019 at 1:07 pm
There is growing concern in the scientific and public health community that chronic wasting disease, which is killing deer in Minnesota, Wisconsin and elsewhere, could jump to people someday.
That unsettling news surfaced at a hearing Thursday at the Minnesota Capitol, where a number of experts from the University of Minnesota pressed upon lawmakers that the disease should be treated as a public health issue ? a major expansion of its current scope as mostly a wildlife and hunting concern.
The issue is especially pressing for Minnesota, where wildlife officials are tracking the state?s largest outbreak of CWD yet in deer in the southeast portion of the state.
No person is known to have gotten sick from eating or handling a CWD-infected deer.
But scientists have always been wary of it because the disease is spread via extremely hardy protein molecules, known as prions, making it similar to mad cow disease, which did jump from cows to people. Mad cow disease is also fatal and without a cure.
Michael Osterholm, director for the U?s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy who sat on a panel of experts tracking the emergence of mad cow disease, or BSE, decades ago, told lawmakers this:
?It is my best professional judgment based on my public health experience and the risk of BSE transmission to humans in the 1980s and 1990s and my extensive review and evaluation of laboratory research studies ? that it is probable that human cases of CWD associated with the consumption of contaminated meat will be documented in the years ahead. It is possible that number of human cases will be substantial and will not be isolated events.?
Osterholm said he knows that skeptics will accuse him of stoking fear ? and he did say this: ?If Stephen King could write an infectious disease novel, he would write about prions like this.? But, he noted that for years, many in the public health and beef industry did not believe mad cow disease could infect people. In 1996, researchers confirmed that BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) can infect people as variant known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).
WHY CONCERN IS GROWING
More than a year ago, Canadian researchers publicly presented initial findings that some primates ? macaque monkeys ? in a laboratory were fed CWD-infected meat and developed neurological disorders. The results have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, but the findings sparked enough concern in Canada for the nation?s food safety agency to issue an advisory. However, a different group of researchers published a study that failed to find such a transmission...
Experts: Yes, chronic wasting disease in deer is a public health issue ? for people
By Dave Orrick | Pioneer Press
PUBLISHED: February 7, 2019 at 6:02 pm | UPDATED: February 8, 2019 at 1:07 pm
There is growing concern in the scientific and public health community that chronic wasting disease, which is killing deer in Minnesota, Wisconsin and elsewhere, could jump to people someday.
That unsettling news surfaced at a hearing Thursday at the Minnesota Capitol, where a number of experts from the University of Minnesota pressed upon lawmakers that the disease should be treated as a public health issue ? a major expansion of its current scope as mostly a wildlife and hunting concern.
The issue is especially pressing for Minnesota, where wildlife officials are tracking the state?s largest outbreak of CWD yet in deer in the southeast portion of the state.
No person is known to have gotten sick from eating or handling a CWD-infected deer.
But scientists have always been wary of it because the disease is spread via extremely hardy protein molecules, known as prions, making it similar to mad cow disease, which did jump from cows to people. Mad cow disease is also fatal and without a cure.
Michael Osterholm, director for the U?s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy who sat on a panel of experts tracking the emergence of mad cow disease, or BSE, decades ago, told lawmakers this:
?It is my best professional judgment based on my public health experience and the risk of BSE transmission to humans in the 1980s and 1990s and my extensive review and evaluation of laboratory research studies ? that it is probable that human cases of CWD associated with the consumption of contaminated meat will be documented in the years ahead. It is possible that number of human cases will be substantial and will not be isolated events.?
Osterholm said he knows that skeptics will accuse him of stoking fear ? and he did say this: ?If Stephen King could write an infectious disease novel, he would write about prions like this.? But, he noted that for years, many in the public health and beef industry did not believe mad cow disease could infect people. In 1996, researchers confirmed that BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) can infect people as variant known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).
WHY CONCERN IS GROWING
More than a year ago, Canadian researchers publicly presented initial findings that some primates ? macaque monkeys ? in a laboratory were fed CWD-infected meat and developed neurological disorders. The results have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, but the findings sparked enough concern in Canada for the nation?s food safety agency to issue an advisory. However, a different group of researchers published a study that failed to find such a transmission...
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