August 25, 2022 • 39 mins
Have you heard about Chronic Wasting Disease? You will.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
It could happen. Here is a podcast. Sometimes it's about
good stuff and ways people can fix things. Sometimes it's
about frightening stuff like today, today's a scary episode. Joining
me to scare everybody is Professor Calvin Norman. Calvin, how
are you doing today? Oh, Robert, I do well some days,
(00:26):
but most days not. I work on climate change, invasive species,
forest health issues, a chronic waste disease. So were their
problems with those things? Okay? Well, actually last time were
we talked about climate change? Solve that. So we're good there,
that's all been solving. We locked that down, right, Yeah,
you get. We got the we got the eels fed.
That was the problem. Oh yeah, yeah, there's like a
(00:48):
car comb it's electric. We're good. We're nailing it. So
I get. We had you on the show once before
to talk about how the forest is bad. Uh yeah, um,
still bad. Still a lot of problems in the forest,
as the people who are watching their forests burn can
probably uh say. Although there's other problems than that, as
we talked about in your episode. Didn't mean an email
(01:10):
a while back. It took a bit for me to
get my ship together to have you back on. But
it was a frightening email about a disease sweeping through
the country that could have massive effects on the lives
of everybody listening to this. Um, And it's not one
of the diseases that you're all thinking about. I know,
there's a couple of things that meet that decision that
that like, there's a couple of different diseases running a
(01:31):
check throughout the United States at the moment and the world. Um,
we are not talking about either of the ones that
are big in the news right now. We're gonna talk
about chronic wasting disease calviny. You want to kind of
introduce that concept to the people, because this was not
something I really I had heard of it, but I didn't.
It was just kind of like, you know, animals have
weird diseases, right, cats get you know, lymphoma or whatever.
(01:52):
I never thought about it much as a as a
thing that was a problem other than a problem for
some deer. But it is. It is quite an issue. Yeah, yeah,
it's if it stays in dear, I will be happy.
Let's put it like that. So, um, we're gonna actually
like do a little throwback to the past year. Watch
watch out, anyone whole lot. So we're gonna go back
(02:12):
to the nineties. All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna get
my shoulder pads on, I'm gonna get my X Files
poster stuck up on the wall. I'm gonna vote for
a serial sexual abuser. Well that's that's every decade. Um, okay, sorry, So,
so chronic wasting diseases a pry and the reason we're
(02:33):
going back to is a prian disease. And the reason
we're going back to the nineties is to to look
at the the most the biggest like reason anyone would
have heard of a prion disease outside of like you
know some like you know, brain scientists and stuff, and
that's you know, bov line bovine sponge form, its appalopathy,
or more commonly known as mad cow disease. So you know, Robert,
(02:54):
I'm not sure how much you are aware of mad cow.
It popped up in the US in the two thousand's,
but it killed a bunch of people in England in
the nineties. Yeah, isn't there like there's still restrictions on
like blood donation and stuff if you lived in England
at a certain period, right, Like there's some weird ship
like that. Yeah, you can't donate blood for that. Um,
(03:14):
that's a very good reason. We're going too that in
a second. Actually always in England not too long ago,
and I did not eat beef there because I've read
too much about prions to mess around with that stuff. Yeah,
I mean, thankfully here in America we have health food standards,
unlike those filthy Brits. But yeah, yeah we had a scare.
Um Canada head a scare and we'll talk about the
(03:35):
repercussions of that later. But so the reason we're going
back is we're gonna look at the most recent time
prians have become mainstream. So what happened there? So l well,
let me just unfold this a little bit. That's a joke,
y'all all understand it three minutes hopefully. So a prion,
it's a protein in your brain. Now, UM, I'm not
(03:55):
a neurologist. I am a wildlife biologist. Force sorry, So, um,
I'm not gonna be the answer I question out there
about brains and proteins and stuff like that. Um, but
what what the prion protein in your brain does is
it moves copper around, which is important for cell stuff.
I personally think that mankind should have never looked through
a microscope and everything at the celler level is just heresy.
(04:17):
We shouldn't look at it at all. Now, I'm i'm, I'm,
I'm completely on board with you. There. There's certain things
we never should have studied, and anything that involves a
microscope is one of them. Oh yeah, you lost me there.
HandLens I'm good for you can like see like small stuff,
but microscopes out. Okay. So, so in your brain you're
moving around copper and stuff and it's important for like
cell stuff. So, um, we're gonna go back to high
(04:38):
school biology. For most folks. You know, proteins building block
of life important. So your protein structure is dictated by
the elements in it and how they're like arranged, you know,
like stacked on top of each other. So that's that's basic,
you know, high school biology. But then you know, as
you get a little bit further in biology, you find
out there's it's a little bit more complex. So proteins,
(04:59):
like all things in our real world, are unfortunately not
like in the textbook, and these are three D and
so they have like shapes and folds. Now, when folded correctly.
It just priam protein operates normally and just moves copper around. Um.
Unfortunately doesn't always you know, sometimes it doesn't fold correctly.
And when that happens, it doesn't move copper, and so
(05:21):
brains have a little bit of an issue because they
don't get copper. Yeah, and this is why all those
trucks stops sell those copper bands that you can put
on your wrist to solve diseases. Right, it's to deal
with that. Yeah, you just keep that copper band on
your rest solve that problem. Yeah. So so what what
happens when that happens is you get a prion disease.
There are some that evolve in that just like they
(05:42):
don't evolve because they're not living um that just pop
up in nature. So like a spongef bovine spongef form
and sepalopathy mad cow rappings a little bit Earli talking
about in a second scrapey uh, feline sponge form and
sepalopathy which comes from cats that eight meat that was
infected with mad cow um. And then there's kuru. I think, yeah,
(06:03):
that's the one cannibals get, right, Like this is famously
why cannibals quote unquote go crazy. Actually a lot of cannibals.
We're well aware that you don't eat meat from certain areas,
but it is a thing. If you're going to eat people,
be really careful about the spine. Don't eat brains and
spines yet. That's that's exactly. Yeah. Um, there's um and
in humans it's called um the spongeforms ceplopathy. I'm gonna
(06:27):
explain the big word in one second. It's called Cromhelds
Yakops disease. It was yeah, two Germans, really neat stuff. Yeah,
it's one of my favorite disease names because you just
know you're in for some like horrifying shit when you
when you see the that spelled out, you're like, well,
that's got to be something bad. Yeah. Well, luckily, like
you know, for two German guys like alive in the thirties, yeah,
(06:51):
died good stuff. Like they two German doctors who weren't
Nazis in that period. Yeah, it seems like one of
them died right before things like that, you know, things
went out there. And then yeah yeah, okay, so so
I've been throwing around this word spongeform at sepalopathy UM
and then like you know, I change like the you know, bovine, feline, whatever.
(07:14):
So it a sponge off form means something looks like
a sponge. And then it's tepalopathy means brain So your
brain turns into a sponge. And that's because you're not
getting copper and so cell cells are falling apart, and
it's your brain just doesn't work, to be real simple,
it's kind of like Alzheimer's. That's how like presenting humans,
which is why it's really hard to figure out. Right.
And then when you want to determine that something has
(07:36):
spongeform and sepalopathy, you've got to cut the brain open,
look at it under a microscope. UM. And as you
can imagine, that doesn't usually happen in people. You don't
usually cut the brains open, and also in a lot
of animals you don't usually cut the brain open, look
at it under microscope. Well it's bad for them, right,
that's not. Yeah, it's always lethal, always a lethal sample.
(07:58):
So like that's the basics of what a prion disease is. UM.
And then when we saw it in in England, what
had what had happened was got into cows. Cows got
it from eating other cows that were fed back to them,
and then it got into humans because we ate what
we the Brits in the third inties in the nineties
eight cows that were infected with bovine spongef form's eplopapy,
(08:19):
and you had to eat a good amount of it
for it to build up in your brain. And what
I mean by that is we're Americans, right right, So
not a problem for Americans. I just want to kind
of like lay a foundation so we all understand what's going. Um.
And so what I mean I build up in your
brain is like you know, you get like one two
proteins in there, You're fine, It's okay. Proteins misfold at
(08:40):
the time, it takes you know, brains are big, especially
in humans, so it takes a while for this to
be going problem. But what happens is over time is
one is, once you build up enough, you're get exposed
to enough prions that are misfolded, like the prions in
the brains start misfolding, and then slowly your brain just
starts stops functioning correctly. Yeah, it's you know, it's it's
(09:02):
like a chain, like a slow chain reaction. UM. So
that's the basics of of um prying diseases and a
spongeform and cephalopathies. Now we're talking about chronic wasting disease UM,
which can be easily described as the dear equivalent of
mad cow disease. And like when you see a lot
of stuff about it, people just it's like called like
(09:23):
zombie deer because like deer get weird when they are
like dying from chronic wasting disease. Like the name chronic
wasting disease comes from because they like wasting away. They're
like drooling and also drinking a lot. They act weird,
they look dumb. Um, they just do weird stuff, and
so people call it zombie like dear, but they're not um.
(09:45):
They're just infected with a prime disease and their brightness
falling apart. It's like it's like a person getting Alzheimer's,
Like you know, they do weird stuff. My grandma has
Alzheimer's is terrible, don't get it? Yeah, yeah, my grandma
had um, the same thing that Robin Williams got the
Loue body dimension. It's it's pretty much the same thing, right,
Like you can just see somebody kind of falling apart
(10:05):
piece by piece, but that probably does make the deer
easier to hunt, yes, and it also makes it really
easy to identify when it's it's advanced stages in dear,
So we've got kind of an understanding of about it.
But like, you know, why do we care? We are people?
We are not, dear, right, Robert, are you a deer? Uh?
Not right now? I mean I have been to a
(10:28):
furry convention, but but I didn't commit. So we all
got our things. Well, Um, so I I hunt, dear Robert,
I think you hunt. I don't know. I'm getting I'm
getting ready for for hunting season as we as we speak. Yeah,
so so, um, lots of people hunt deer and they
eat deer, which is which is cool, and it's fine
(10:50):
and it's important to do in you know, certain ecosystems.
I mean in most of the US, like, deer have
been hunted by various you know humans for yes, as
long as people have in here, so you know, it's
it's a natural thing to do. It's very normal for
people to hunt deer, and it's very normal. And also
there are areas where we killed everything else that hunts deer. Yeah,
(11:11):
so there's there's anyway whatever. We don't need to defend
deer hunting here. I I've done hours of webinars on
the points of deer management. It's it's a real fun
subject to you. But we do care about that. We're
talking about chronic waste disease, fun stuff, so so we
care about that. We care about chronic wasting disease because
it impacts all members of the servant family or deer.
So that's you know, elk moose. I just learned the
(11:33):
Europeans called moose European elk, wild arrogant. Yeah, look at
a moose. Look at an elk. Super different. It's wildly
different animals. Like they're both very big, but they're also
different sizes. It's like the difference between like an armored
car and a tank. Like a fucking moose is like
(11:54):
it's basically an elephant in terms of its footprints. Like
they're so cool to see but so enormous. Yeah. Yeah,
the impact it can get in all servants that we know,
it's um and you know, people like you know, people
like to see servants, they like to hunt servants. We'd
like to do it, you know in different countries. They're delicious,
they have the best meat. Yes, absolutely, so much better
(12:16):
than fucking beef, so much better than pork in my opinion,
like fucking love venicel Oh, yeah, moose. I don't know
if you had moose. I've had once. Oh it's yeah,
moose and elk wonderful meats. That's actually a big thing
Joe Rogan and I talk about when we're hanging out
is elk meat. He's a big elk meat guy. That's good.
(12:36):
I've I've never I've never hunted an elk. I've put
in for the lottery every year. But it's hard to
get hard to get elk tags in Pennsylvania. I know.
It's a real surprise. Yeah, you know what, I'll go
ahead and reach out now. It's easy to get the
tags here, but it is hard unless you have a
friend with land that elks are on to actually hunt
them as as much as Yeah. Anyway, if you've got
land in Oregon and you want me to hunt elk
(12:58):
on it, hit hit us up. Yeah. So so you know,
as we can see, this is a clear demand for
servants and serfarent products and so in like the fifties
and sixties, people started, you know, they're like, well, you
know sometimes you're not always good at hunting, and not
everyone wants the hunt, so they started trying to domesticate
and farm them, right, um servants famously like running away,
(13:23):
I've seen a lot of deer tails, Robert, you hunt,
I'm sure you have. Yeah, and a lot of like
tracks that you can tell and like with ship or
something near them that like, oh, man, I fucking missed
that son of a bit by like thirty seconds. Yeah. Yeah,
and if if, even if you drive around, you'll see
just they're like, oh car, I'm out in five thousand.
That don't need to be here. Sometimes they go across
(13:43):
the road and hit him. That's the story, yea some states. Yeah,
you know, sometimes it's Bruce to heck. But that is
how I get to eat some moose. Someone hit it
with a car. Hell yeah. Um but um. So they
don't like being in captivity at all. Not a fan,
not a fan, and so they're very they're very stressed
in captivity. And then like in the sixties in Colorado,
(14:06):
um at on the Colorado University of Colorado, on their
deer farm, they noticed like the deer were getting skinny
and weird. And that's how that's where chronic wasting disease
was discovered because we tried to fucking farm an animal
that's not okay, awesome, I love it. Yeah, yeah, there
there are some folks who think that it's a natural thing,
(14:28):
but it doesn't look like it doesn't look like it. Uh,
no reports of it being around from before the sixties.
And as we laid out, lots of people ate a
lot of deer and saw a lot of deer before
the sixties, so probably came from farming servants. So then
since then, um, there's the deer. Farming is not really regulated.
And also deer are not really easy to keep in captivity.
(14:50):
They like to jump and like when fences, fences blow down,
and so they'll get out of captivity. And like also
other deer they like come up to you know, captive
deer and they're like, yo, what's up with you though
you're in a cage, huh, And so you can actually
see them. They'll interact through the fence. Um, and that's
probably how it got out of containment, is through interactions
and you know, servants being spread around the country. And
(15:13):
so now chronic waste disease is found in thirty states
I think four Canadian provinces, UH, Scandinavia and Korea, So
I think it's four or five countries. So so it's
out there. It's out there. Um, and it's it's infecting
certain populations across the US and across the across Canada,
(15:34):
the world. Um, it's real bad. It's real bad. So
it seems like a problem. Yeah. Yeah, So if you're
a deer, what happens is you either interact with to
pick up chronic wasting disease. We'll go through the deer
kind of the progression and dear to pick it up.
Do you either interact with the deers that has chronic
wasting disease? You go up and smell them, you look
them a little bit, deer groom each other, you know,
(15:56):
the the animals. Um, you eat plant that another deer
pooped on, now doesn't have to have pooped on that plant.
So like this is a deal. It's effective with chronic
chronic waste disease. Can poop in the soil and the
plant will pick up the prayon from the soil and
then yeah, and then another deer can come in it
can just spread. Yeah cool, that's that's some real scary yeah. Yeah,
(16:21):
And it can also you can also pick it up
from water, but it has spreading in water is really tough.
So um, those are your main vectors is you know,
deer to deer and environment to deer um. And that's
why it's pretty tough to control once it gets into
a state, because to destroy it you have to dig
up the soil and you have to burn it a
thousand degrees for an hour, or you have to expose
(16:42):
exposure to bleach for an hour to destroy the prion
because it's not a living thing, it's a protein. Yeah,
I mean, and there are a couple of towns that
I would be okay doing that too, but on a
wide scale that seems difficult to pull off. Yeah. I
can think of a state that starts with an O
in an age that I wouldn't mind losing, you know,
if we just were like, why not give it a shot? Yeah,
(17:04):
it's just Ohio, come on, it's not it's not a
real state. So in Deer, we we're gonna just we're
gonna stay just in the deer where we're not gonna
get scary yet. So in in Dear, this slowly builds
(17:25):
up throughout the population and you get worst case scenarios
like in south western Wisconsin where like the deer harvested
h bucks harvested a year are positive for chronic wasting disease,
and because it's an always fatal you know, brain disease,
you're looking at population collapse in extinction. Yeah, because it
(17:47):
remains in the soil too, Like it's it's around for
at least two probably more years. But the studies we've
done our only two years. Because um, these are not
fun things to study. People have died studying these diseases
from prions like and they when they've done work on
like BSc laptech actually pricked herself with the tool uh
and got um c j c j D and died
(18:09):
from it. So yeah, they're not fun to study really,
you know that's this is like we're talking like Martians
suit style study stuff. It's not fun. So yeah, the
stand level ship yeah yeah, yeah exactly. Yeah. So so
like you know it without you know, when chronic waste
(18:31):
disease is not addressed into your populations, like in southeastern
or southwestern Wisconsin, you're looking at extinction level stuff because
all of the deer that are out there are most
you know se them have chronic waste disease or at
some point in getting chronic waste disease, which means that
they're putting more and more of in the environment and
they're more like, if you're a non infected deer, you're
(18:51):
you know, three cores. Your buddies are infected, so you're
gonna get chronic wasting disease and be dead within two
or three years. So you're looking at extinction of all
servants in that area for some amount of time until
it comes out of the soil. That's bad. That is
a problem, yes, yeah, yeah, as we have established, neither
of us are dear, So why do we care? I
(19:12):
mean outside of like the fact that deer are pretty
important to the ecology of local areas and that that
collapses bad? Yeah, why what is what is the problem? Like,
what is the risks to human beings beyond that? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
we we we put in college all aside all the time,
like this is the world. We don't really care about that. Yeah,
(19:32):
I ideal with what happened that you pretty college aside,
so I'm super used to that that being done. So
the risk is if it jumps into humans because all
of a sudden, you have a disease that's really hard
to detect that can live in the environment, that can
be transferred from not just spinal fluid, but like if
(19:53):
you eat a lot of infected meat from deer. You know,
if you eat um, some of the organs you can
get at a high risk. So so you know, all
of a sudden, you have a large portion of the
population that could be exposed through direct consumption. But the
other thing is is prians are really hard to kill.
I said, they live in soil. They also live on steel, services,
glass surfaces, every like surface that they've tested like trying
(20:16):
to kill prions, like you know, putting prions on seeing
how long they live there hang out there. There was
some surgical equipment that was infected with the prion gave
someone chronic wasting not crying c j D three years
after using it out someone who had um c j
D G. Yeah, and that's like you know, surgical great
stainless steel stuff so like not supposed to hold things
(20:36):
gets like cleaned, but not like super like not prian
level cleaning because they didn't know about at the time.
So so there's there's the risk is is is it
could potentially develop into a human something that impacts human's
like right now, it hasn't. We do have eight different
variations of it out there in the landscape. And as
more and more do you are exposed to it, what happens,
(21:00):
We get more and more variations of it because that's
just what happens in nature, as we're all becoming familiar
with with COVID. Yeah, it keeps changing because it's nothing
has been done to stop it from spreading. Yeah, and
like the only thing you can do to stop it
is just like reduced deer numbers. You can't really eliminate
out of the landscape because it's in the soil. Yeah,
(21:20):
and you can't you can't test live dear for it.
You gotta kill him to do it. There's they are developed.
There are some tests being developed to determine if animals
are infected UM that are faster, but you know, it's
still it's still in progress. So that's called art quick.
It's a protein test that's that's much faster than current testing,
but it's still in progress. So the thing that really
(21:43):
scares me is the other, well, the other thing about
that makes chronic wasting to is different from you know
bs mad cow diseases. Mad cow was in cows that
we're in you know, captive spaces and you know know
where the cows are. Yeah, it's a problem, but it's
a problem that you can, like with enough fire and
(22:06):
or other tools eradicate. Yeah. Yeah, And it didn't it
didn't seem to be you know, very president soil. And
it was like you had defeat dead cows to dead
cow to live cows to get them infected. Chronic waste
disease is a different beast. Um. So the real scary
potential here is that it's in soil, so you can
get into plants. And we know that plants get transmit
(22:28):
chronic waste disease other deer, so it could you know,
transmitted to other animals like things that eat plants. You know,
for example, you and I eat plants. If you're an American,
you eat corn and a couple of different forms. Um,
dear love hanging out in corn fields. Oh yeah, So
there is an exposure vector right there, and it's you know,
(22:50):
when you're doing when you're processing corn in corncer Let's say, um,
you take a bunch of corn from a bunch of
the places, uh sposh it up grind it up. You know,
you do a bunch of stuff to it in on
steel surfaces, and you don't need to a thousand degrees
for an hour. So all of a sudden you have
like a case of soda that could be infected with
chronic wasting disease. There's the potential, the big potential damage
(23:12):
if this ship jumps to people, which it hasn't yet.
I want to be really clear about that, so we're
not causing to. But if it does, the containment thing
is like even in order of magnitude beyond fucking COVID
ship right Like, it's because it's spread through the soil.
It gets into the fucking basic ingredients of food, and
we we simply the way that we process that stuff
(23:33):
isn't set up in a way that will eliminate it.
Right now, Yeah, and I would tell you you really
can't on a large scale, like process anything that's then
make it safe from you know, like chronic wasting disease,
because you have to, like you know, if you if
you like cut up like let's let's let's go back
to like assuming like you know, it's just in you
(23:54):
you're handling an affected deer. If you cut that deer up.
You use your knife, you gotta put it in bleach
for an hour and then you can come back to
it just really corrosive, so eventually destroy your knife. There's
there's your end thing there. But you can also be
through your hands, you know, touching it, you can get it. Um. Yeah,
so there's there's a scary part there. I mean, like
you like as you pointed out, and I started, I
really totally failed on my part to mention it hasn't
(24:15):
jumped to humans. Yes, not, we are not saying you
are going to get the disease tomorrow. That is not
the but it also like isn't it like there's nothing
that says it can't jump to humans? Right right right exactly? So, Um,
there have been a number of like three or four.
There are two studies I know, I I there's a
(24:35):
third one I've heard about. UM looking at if you know,
human like animals can get chronic waste and disease. So
that's macaques, which are a kind of monkey. UM. And
when they have been fed chronic you know, meat and
infected with chronic waste disease UM, and they were exposed
to blood, they were fed it, they were exposed to
(24:56):
blood and so it was just injective right into the
back of their brain stem. Um monkey's got chronic wasting disease,
so it looks like it's possible. Um. And then also hamsters,
which are also used as a human standing, have also
been fed meat infected with chronic wasting disease and they
were able to get it, and they really get it
from a number of different sources. Um. There are some
(25:18):
really like fun and by fun, I mean scary papers
out there about like all the ways like chronic wasting
disease moves around and survives. Uh. And the studies about
like using human standings are not always fun to read.
And this is this is definitely one of those things
where it's like, yeah, what is the other option other
(25:40):
than yeah, you have to try it on ship. That's yeah,
that's that's very unsettling, but like, yeah, what else are
you gonna do? Like this is something you do have
to know, Yeah, yeah, and UM. The other problem with
prions is detection when it comes to like, you know,
different species ease because it presents like Alzheimer's and so
(26:02):
the only way you know that something got up pry
On disease is if you cut their head. If you
cut its head open, you look at its brain, so
um when and in humans, it can take a long
time for these symptoms to present. I think, like if
you look it up on Wikipedia, it's is like the
average like age detection is sixty years and then we're
good fine. Yeah. Yeah, the researchers that I've spoken to
(26:26):
say it takes like forty years for enough prance to
build up in your brain for it to like, you know,
start to show symptoms, so it you know, if it
is to jump, if it jumps the species bearer, the
first time we detected will probably not be the first
time anyone has been infected. Yeah, it will already have
spread quite widely, and then people will hopefully not but yeah,
(26:49):
so so that that's the scary part. That that's the
human side scary part. But you know, we don't always
have to keep human side scary. Sometimes. You know, things
work in you know, monkeys and hamsters that don't work
in humans. And we've cured cancer, you know, hundreds of
times in mice, right, yeah, and in humans it's a
lot harder to do because we're not mice, we're not monkeys,
we're humans. So it doesn't always work like that. But
(27:11):
the the other scary part is when it comes to
agriculture and the impact on agriculture. So pigs can pick
up chronic wasting disease. There what's called a prian amplifier,
so they can pick it up. They can like you know,
hangs out in them, just find it doesn't kill pigs
at all. They can people. That's true. That's the truth
(27:34):
right there, that's the truth. Yeah. So so you know,
if if it you know, as people, you know, government's
become more aware of it and more concerned about it.
There there's the real possibility of you know, agricultural exports
getting hammered on, you know, exporting it because you know
other countries you know, are concerned about spreading it. So
(27:55):
right now, you know it's pretty hard to well, it's
getting increasingly the harder to export. Live dear is probably
should be Probably farming servants is not a great idea
for their health and ours. But um, you know, also
there's the concern about spread. So if if chronic wasting
disease is you know, crosses from humans to cows like
we've seen you know, like if you know BSc just
(28:17):
pops up in some cows you know that might be
from chronic wasting disease, and the impact of that is
going to be huge. I mean Canada, they were shut
out of the Japanese market for fourteen years, Japanese beef
market for fourteen years following a case of mad cow
disease and two thousand and six they got let back
in two years ago and the studies and that was
like a couple of billion dollars in damage to the
(28:38):
Canadian beef market. So you know, and that was BSc,
which does not do it doesn't transfer via plant, So
imagine it's the US you know, agricultural export market market
got shut down for plants that like economic damage is incalculable. Yeah,
so let's just get a part about chronic wasting. This
(29:00):
These those are all the scarinesses. That's what keeps me
up at night. This is frightening and important for people
to be aware of because it's a serious threat. Are
there things that can be done at the moment? Like,
(29:22):
is there is there inactionable You're not just like not
on a what can our audience do? But like, is
there a thing that could potentially be done by you know,
states or the federal government never that would help this, Like,
is there actually do we do it? Do we have
any fucking idea of like what could be done to
make it less likely for the kind of nightmare scenarios
that we've alluded to to occur here. Yeah, So the
(29:45):
best kit, you know, the best things we can do
are to you know, hunt deer, reduced der population, so
that way you're you know, taking deer out that might
be infected. And when you hunt deer in most areas
that infected you there's a you test them for free
with your state or various authorities, and so then those
carcasses are destroyed so you can remove you know, disease
off the landscape that way. Um. And then by also
(30:06):
just hunting deer, you reduce population levels and so you
make it you make the disease loading in the landscape
lower and it less likely to spread, you know, both
to other deers and then potentially vector to other animals
exposed to other animals. Um, excuse me. New York is
a great example of this. They had a case of
chronic waste and disease pop up, took it out really,
you know, hunted that area hard. I think that they
(30:28):
even brought in professionals and did some real serious deer
reduction and they haven't had a case since. So you know,
in areas where it pops up, you can just hammer
it with you know, lethal removal of animals, harvesting whatever,
and um, you can prevent spread um, and you cannot.
You can really not get back the other thing we
got to do. We need to be very serious about.
(30:49):
We need to take the captive servant industry. So I've
used the word serve a couple of times. They never
defined it. My apologies. Servants are members of the deer family,
so elk moose, Yeah, seek a deer, all those guys
red deer fatility or what a bunch of them. Um.
We need to make sure that we're very closely regulating
that industry because of the potential spread. There was a
farmer in Wisconsin that sent like almost four hundred different
(31:12):
infected deer to like a hundred nineties seven different farms
um over the course of like four years. So you know,
it's regulation is incredibly important. UM. And it's it's rarely
you know, it's not really enough on most farms my
home state here we have UM. You know, if you
(31:33):
make less than ten thousand dollars from your servant farm.
You don't have to report it, you don't have to
track it or anything. That's a real problem because we
are experiencing expanding chronic waste disease. So regulation, you know,
that's fun. Maybe we just shouldn't be farming servants. Maybe
that's bad. Yeah, I don't disagree with you at all there. Yeah,
not not a fan. Yeah. From the ethical standpoint too,
(31:56):
there's there's many I raise a several different raise bunnies
and chickens and goats, and I help raise sheep for
for meat. Uh, there's plenty of different things that you
can raise for meat that are used to it because
we've been raising them for meat for like tens of
thousands of fucking years. Like the sheep. I have orangoras,
(32:17):
which I didn't go back like two years, Like they're
they're they're they're meant for it. We have changed them
into animals that are supposed to be raised for meat.
Don't take new animals and try to farm them like
that because it seems like it causes problems. Yeah, Well,
there's a really neat there's a really neat work out
there about the about domestications stress and like you know,
(32:38):
domestic kid sheep don't care about being domesticated, whereas like
they've compared like domesticated cheap to wildcheep. Wild cheep die
really quick when you put in domestication from the stress.
But yeah, like you said, uh, maybe maybe we don't
maybe we don't play around with some of these animals
to try to force them to do human what we
humans want them to do. You know, it's okay for
animals to just be animals. Not wrong with that. Um. Yeah.
(33:00):
So the other thing, there was a large amount of
money set aside, and I can't remember which legislative packager
was they got defeated a while back that put money
towards chronic wasting disease research. So you know, legislators and
states can be you know, legislatures and government can be
taken seriously putting money towards it. Right now, it's there's
not a lot of money going towards it because it's like, yeah,
it's a zombie deer thing who cares. Yeah, well, you
(33:22):
could get into this is not just a problem for
deer hunters. This could be a real issue for everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
So yeah, I mean, I mean it's kind of like
a larger symptomatic thing to we don't really take environmental
problems that seriously. Um yeah, yeah, I mean the Yeah,
the scary thing about this is we don't treat the
(33:43):
environmental problem seriously. When everyone's saying, like, hey, the consequences
that like all of Florida will be uninhabitable, right, Like,
we don't take that seriously. So when you're saying, this
is much wonkier, which is definitely a barrier to effective action. Yeah.
I did a legislative test money about chronic wasting disease
a couple of months back, and no one was paying attention,
(34:04):
but you know, it made me feel good. I was
doing something. Oh he was a fun thing about Florida
and chronic wasting disease. So Florida, you know, full of
invasive species. Obviously it has chronic waste disease. Like, yeah,
it's a Florida obviously, gotta pick up a new disease.
You know what else is in Florida? Colonies of maccaques.
There's like two colonies of I was unaware of that. Yeah.
(34:28):
Was it because people were an ill advisedly keeping pets?
I think one of them started that way, and I
think one of them was like some monkeys that have
been like kept for testing or zoo stuff escaped. But
there are at least like two colonies of like maccaques
in Florida, which also has chronic waste disease, So you know,
there's I don't think the chronic they're like near the Everglades.
(34:48):
I don't think chronic waste disease made that far south
of Florida. So there's a there's a fun possibility of
the lab experiments under highly control conditions getting um, you know,
performed in in the wild setting, and we could see
if if mccax can pick up chronic waste disease in
the wild. Um, there's a there's a fun research project
for someone who uh, you know is able to handle
dark sides of things. Yeah, thank you Florida, Um, but
(35:13):
more importantly, thank you flow right uh. And a lot
of people are unaware of this was just a couple
of years ago in the Eurovision Song Awards representing San Marino.
So you know, twenty two overall not bad. Yeah, that's
pretty good, better than I could do. Good day. And also,
(35:37):
you are not technically a citizen of the Republic of
San Marino. No, but yet they offered me citizenship. I
would consider it absolutely. Who wouldn't want to be a
citizen of the most serene Republic of San Marino. Yeah.
I I've looked at Andorra, so you know, it would
be a really we're looking at European micro nations. I
mean if and Dora came knock in versus San Marino,
(35:57):
obviously San Maria is getting kicked to the curb of
that like dual like government between the President of France
and like the Pope of or not the Bishopah, it's
like a bishop of like somewhere in Italy. Yeah, it's
very funny. Um. Yeah, you gotta love those weird little
micro republics. Yeah. Um so okay, well this has been great. Yeah,
(36:21):
I'm glad this is happening. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool and fun. Yeah.
I'm not usually fun to hang out with my talk
about work stuff, I know. But it's like it's again,
people need to be aware of this, Like this is
one of those just in the same way that like
people were talking about for years prior to COVID. Hey,
we we actually really need to be aware, like a
(36:41):
coronavirus could break out and it will spread really quickly
due to the way that global travel and transit and
stuff works, and it'll be almost impossible to control. Um,
you know, we should we should build structures into our
societies to make it easier for us to deal with
a coronavirus, which we didn't do, but maybe we'll do
it this time. Yeah, well, what makes it really fun?
(37:03):
I'm just gonna I'm gonna build off you for a second.
You've fallen into my trap. Here. The same people who
were writing about like mers and predicted you know, I
can't remember from which game first Merser Stars. I can't
rember which one. The same people who predicted that and
then who are also predicting um COVID are also talking
about chronic wasting disease. So it's like, you know, I
(37:25):
really hope you don't get to be right on this one.
You know, I just want you to lose one of
these times here, Bud. You're a nice guy, real smart guy,
But can you be wrong occasionally, just for just for
like you know, old time's sake, Just be nice to me. Yeah, well,
there we go. Um, that's been a fun episode. Everybody
(37:48):
have a good time. Um, thank you, Calvin, do you
have anything you want to like plug before we roll
out here. Yeah, I would like to plug. Trees' is
real neat try that we are supported by trees. Um,
not the plant, but a club in Dallas that I
took ecstasy at once. That's a primary sponsors, physically supported
(38:09):
by trees. My computers on wood so oh excellent? Yeah?
Is that also good? Yeah, trees like to plug. Also
getting outside, that's good for you. Do that consolutely, get
outside for sure. Yeah. Uh. Tweet tweets from from birds,
I don't do the twitters, not from Twitter, Yes, definitely. Yeah,
those are things that I'd like to plug. Yeah. Replacing
(38:30):
the tweets from Twitter that you encounter with tweets from
birds is probably among the best things you can do
for your mental health, unless it's this one bird that
lived outside of my apartment in Los Angeles. But anyway,
um well, Calvin, thank you for coming on. I appreciate
your expertise, even though it's always deeply unsettling. Um, that's
(38:52):
gonna do it for all of us here today, And
it could happen here, by which I mean you and me.
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website
cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(39:13):
listen to podcasts, you can find sources for It could
happen here, Updated monthly at cool zone media dot com
slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It could happen. Here is a podcast. Sometimes it's about
good stuff and ways people can fix things. Sometimes it's
about frightening stuff like today, today's a scary episode. Joining
me to scare everybody is Professor Calvin Norman. Calvin, how
are you doing today? Oh, Robert, I do well some days,
(00:26):
but most days not. I work on climate change, invasive species,
forest health issues, a chronic waste disease. So were their
problems with those things? Okay? Well, actually last time were
we talked about climate change? Solve that. So we're good there,
that's all been solving. We locked that down, right, Yeah,
you get. We got the we got the eels fed.
That was the problem. Oh yeah, yeah, there's like a
(00:48):
car comb it's electric. We're good. We're nailing it. So
I get. We had you on the show once before
to talk about how the forest is bad. Uh yeah, um,
still bad. Still a lot of problems in the forest,
as the people who are watching their forests burn can
probably uh say. Although there's other problems than that, as
we talked about in your episode. Didn't mean an email
(01:10):
a while back. It took a bit for me to
get my ship together to have you back on. But
it was a frightening email about a disease sweeping through
the country that could have massive effects on the lives
of everybody listening to this. Um, And it's not one
of the diseases that you're all thinking about. I know,
there's a couple of things that meet that decision that
that like, there's a couple of different diseases running a
(01:31):
check throughout the United States at the moment and the world. Um,
we are not talking about either of the ones that
are big in the news right now. We're gonna talk
about chronic wasting disease calviny. You want to kind of
introduce that concept to the people, because this was not
something I really I had heard of it, but I didn't.
It was just kind of like, you know, animals have
weird diseases, right, cats get you know, lymphoma or whatever.
(01:52):
I never thought about it much as a as a
thing that was a problem other than a problem for
some deer. But it is. It is quite an issue. Yeah, yeah,
it's if it stays in dear, I will be happy.
Let's put it like that. So, um, we're gonna actually
like do a little throwback to the past year. Watch
watch out, anyone whole lot. So we're gonna go back
(02:12):
to the nineties. All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna get
my shoulder pads on, I'm gonna get my X Files
poster stuck up on the wall. I'm gonna vote for
a serial sexual abuser. Well that's that's every decade. Um, okay, sorry, So,
so chronic wasting diseases a pry and the reason we're
(02:33):
going back to is a prian disease. And the reason
we're going back to the nineties is to to look
at the the most the biggest like reason anyone would
have heard of a prion disease outside of like you
know some like you know, brain scientists and stuff, and
that's you know, bov line bovine sponge form, its appalopathy,
or more commonly known as mad cow disease. So you know, Robert,
(02:54):
I'm not sure how much you are aware of mad cow.
It popped up in the US in the two thousand's,
but it killed a bunch of people in England in
the nineties. Yeah, isn't there like there's still restrictions on
like blood donation and stuff if you lived in England
at a certain period, right, Like there's some weird ship
like that. Yeah, you can't donate blood for that. Um,
(03:14):
that's a very good reason. We're going too that in
a second. Actually always in England not too long ago,
and I did not eat beef there because I've read
too much about prions to mess around with that stuff. Yeah,
I mean, thankfully here in America we have health food standards,
unlike those filthy Brits. But yeah, yeah we had a scare.
Um Canada head a scare and we'll talk about the
(03:35):
repercussions of that later. But so the reason we're going
back is we're gonna look at the most recent time
prians have become mainstream. So what happened there? So l well,
let me just unfold this a little bit. That's a joke,
y'all all understand it three minutes hopefully. So a prion,
it's a protein in your brain. Now, UM, I'm not
(03:55):
a neurologist. I am a wildlife biologist. Force sorry, So, um,
I'm not gonna be the answer I question out there
about brains and proteins and stuff like that. Um, but
what what the prion protein in your brain does is
it moves copper around, which is important for cell stuff.
I personally think that mankind should have never looked through
a microscope and everything at the celler level is just heresy.
(04:17):
We shouldn't look at it at all. Now, I'm i'm, I'm,
I'm completely on board with you. There. There's certain things
we never should have studied, and anything that involves a
microscope is one of them. Oh yeah, you lost me there.
HandLens I'm good for you can like see like small stuff,
but microscopes out. Okay. So, so in your brain you're
moving around copper and stuff and it's important for like
cell stuff. So, um, we're gonna go back to high
(04:38):
school biology. For most folks. You know, proteins building block
of life important. So your protein structure is dictated by
the elements in it and how they're like arranged, you know,
like stacked on top of each other. So that's that's basic,
you know, high school biology. But then you know, as
you get a little bit further in biology, you find
out there's it's a little bit more complex. So proteins,
(04:59):
like all things in our real world, are unfortunately not
like in the textbook, and these are three D and
so they have like shapes and folds. Now, when folded correctly.
It just priam protein operates normally and just moves copper around. Um.
Unfortunately doesn't always you know, sometimes it doesn't fold correctly.
And when that happens, it doesn't move copper, and so
(05:21):
brains have a little bit of an issue because they
don't get copper. Yeah, and this is why all those
trucks stops sell those copper bands that you can put
on your wrist to solve diseases. Right, it's to deal
with that. Yeah, you just keep that copper band on
your rest solve that problem. Yeah. So so what what
happens when that happens is you get a prion disease.
There are some that evolve in that just like they
(05:42):
don't evolve because they're not living um that just pop
up in nature. So like a spongef bovine spongef form
and sepalopathy mad cow rappings a little bit Earli talking
about in a second scrapey uh, feline sponge form and
sepalopathy which comes from cats that eight meat that was
infected with mad cow um. And then there's kuru. I think, yeah,
(06:03):
that's the one cannibals get, right, Like this is famously
why cannibals quote unquote go crazy. Actually a lot of cannibals.
We're well aware that you don't eat meat from certain areas,
but it is a thing. If you're going to eat people,
be really careful about the spine. Don't eat brains and
spines yet. That's that's exactly. Yeah. Um, there's um and
in humans it's called um the spongeforms ceplopathy. I'm gonna
(06:27):
explain the big word in one second. It's called Cromhelds
Yakops disease. It was yeah, two Germans, really neat stuff. Yeah,
it's one of my favorite disease names because you just
know you're in for some like horrifying shit when you
when you see the that spelled out, you're like, well,
that's got to be something bad. Yeah. Well, luckily, like
you know, for two German guys like alive in the thirties, yeah,
(06:51):
died good stuff. Like they two German doctors who weren't
Nazis in that period. Yeah, it seems like one of
them died right before things like that, you know, things
went out there. And then yeah yeah, okay, so so
I've been throwing around this word spongeform at sepalopathy UM
and then like you know, I change like the you know, bovine, feline, whatever.
(07:14):
So it a sponge off form means something looks like
a sponge. And then it's tepalopathy means brain So your
brain turns into a sponge. And that's because you're not
getting copper and so cell cells are falling apart, and
it's your brain just doesn't work, to be real simple,
it's kind of like Alzheimer's. That's how like presenting humans,
which is why it's really hard to figure out. Right.
And then when you want to determine that something has
(07:36):
spongeform and sepalopathy, you've got to cut the brain open,
look at it under a microscope. UM. And as you
can imagine, that doesn't usually happen in people. You don't
usually cut the brains open, and also in a lot
of animals you don't usually cut the brain open, look
at it under microscope. Well it's bad for them, right,
that's not. Yeah, it's always lethal, always a lethal sample.
(07:58):
So like that's the basics of what a prion disease is. UM.
And then when we saw it in in England, what
had what had happened was got into cows. Cows got
it from eating other cows that were fed back to them,
and then it got into humans because we ate what
we the Brits in the third inties in the nineties
eight cows that were infected with bovine spongef form's eplopapy,
(08:19):
and you had to eat a good amount of it
for it to build up in your brain. And what
I mean by that is we're Americans, right right, So
not a problem for Americans. I just want to kind
of like lay a foundation so we all understand what's going. Um.
And so what I mean I build up in your
brain is like you know, you get like one two
proteins in there, You're fine, It's okay. Proteins misfold at
(08:40):
the time, it takes you know, brains are big, especially
in humans, so it takes a while for this to
be going problem. But what happens is over time is
one is, once you build up enough, you're get exposed
to enough prions that are misfolded, like the prions in
the brains start misfolding, and then slowly your brain just
starts stops functioning correctly. Yeah, it's you know, it's it's
(09:02):
like a chain, like a slow chain reaction. UM. So
that's the basics of of um prying diseases and a
spongeform and cephalopathies. Now we're talking about chronic wasting disease UM,
which can be easily described as the dear equivalent of
mad cow disease. And like when you see a lot
of stuff about it, people just it's like called like
(09:23):
zombie deer because like deer get weird when they are
like dying from chronic wasting disease. Like the name chronic
wasting disease comes from because they like wasting away. They're
like drooling and also drinking a lot. They act weird,
they look dumb. Um, they just do weird stuff, and
so people call it zombie like dear, but they're not um.
(09:45):
They're just infected with a prime disease and their brightness
falling apart. It's like it's like a person getting Alzheimer's,
Like you know, they do weird stuff. My grandma has
Alzheimer's is terrible, don't get it? Yeah, yeah, my grandma
had um, the same thing that Robin Williams got the
Loue body dimension. It's it's pretty much the same thing, right,
Like you can just see somebody kind of falling apart
(10:05):
piece by piece, but that probably does make the deer
easier to hunt, yes, and it also makes it really
easy to identify when it's it's advanced stages in dear,
So we've got kind of an understanding of about it.
But like, you know, why do we care? We are people?
We are not, dear, right, Robert, are you a deer? Uh?
Not right now? I mean I have been to a
(10:28):
furry convention, but but I didn't commit. So we all
got our things. Well, Um, so I I hunt, dear Robert,
I think you hunt. I don't know. I'm getting I'm
getting ready for for hunting season as we as we speak. Yeah,
so so, um, lots of people hunt deer and they
eat deer, which is which is cool, and it's fine
(10:50):
and it's important to do in you know, certain ecosystems.
I mean in most of the US, like, deer have
been hunted by various you know humans for yes, as
long as people have in here, so you know, it's
it's a natural thing to do. It's very normal for
people to hunt deer, and it's very normal. And also
there are areas where we killed everything else that hunts deer. Yeah,
(11:11):
so there's there's anyway whatever. We don't need to defend
deer hunting here. I I've done hours of webinars on
the points of deer management. It's it's a real fun
subject to you. But we do care about that. We're
talking about chronic waste disease, fun stuff, so so we
care about that. We care about chronic wasting disease because
it impacts all members of the servant family or deer.
So that's you know, elk moose. I just learned the
(11:33):
Europeans called moose European elk, wild arrogant. Yeah, look at
a moose. Look at an elk. Super different. It's wildly
different animals. Like they're both very big, but they're also
different sizes. It's like the difference between like an armored
car and a tank. Like a fucking moose is like
(11:54):
it's basically an elephant in terms of its footprints. Like
they're so cool to see but so enormous. Yeah. Yeah,
the impact it can get in all servants that we know,
it's um and you know, people like you know, people
like to see servants, they like to hunt servants. We'd
like to do it, you know in different countries. They're delicious,
they have the best meat. Yes, absolutely, so much better
(12:16):
than fucking beef, so much better than pork in my opinion,
like fucking love venicel Oh, yeah, moose. I don't know
if you had moose. I've had once. Oh it's yeah,
moose and elk wonderful meats. That's actually a big thing
Joe Rogan and I talk about when we're hanging out
is elk meat. He's a big elk meat guy. That's good.
(12:36):
I've I've never I've never hunted an elk. I've put
in for the lottery every year. But it's hard to
get hard to get elk tags in Pennsylvania. I know.
It's a real surprise. Yeah, you know what, I'll go
ahead and reach out now. It's easy to get the
tags here, but it is hard unless you have a
friend with land that elks are on to actually hunt
them as as much as Yeah. Anyway, if you've got
land in Oregon and you want me to hunt elk
(12:58):
on it, hit hit us up. Yeah. So so you know,
as we can see, this is a clear demand for
servants and serfarent products and so in like the fifties
and sixties, people started, you know, they're like, well, you
know sometimes you're not always good at hunting, and not
everyone wants the hunt, so they started trying to domesticate
and farm them, right, um servants famously like running away,
(13:23):
I've seen a lot of deer tails, Robert, you hunt,
I'm sure you have. Yeah, and a lot of like
tracks that you can tell and like with ship or
something near them that like, oh, man, I fucking missed
that son of a bit by like thirty seconds. Yeah. Yeah,
and if if, even if you drive around, you'll see
just they're like, oh car, I'm out in five thousand.
That don't need to be here. Sometimes they go across
(13:43):
the road and hit him. That's the story, yea some states. Yeah,
you know, sometimes it's Bruce to heck. But that is
how I get to eat some moose. Someone hit it
with a car. Hell yeah. Um but um. So they
don't like being in captivity at all. Not a fan,
not a fan, and so they're very they're very stressed
in captivity. And then like in the sixties in Colorado,
(14:06):
um at on the Colorado University of Colorado, on their
deer farm, they noticed like the deer were getting skinny
and weird. And that's how that's where chronic wasting disease
was discovered because we tried to fucking farm an animal
that's not okay, awesome, I love it. Yeah, yeah, there
there are some folks who think that it's a natural thing,
(14:28):
but it doesn't look like it doesn't look like it. Uh,
no reports of it being around from before the sixties.
And as we laid out, lots of people ate a
lot of deer and saw a lot of deer before
the sixties, so probably came from farming servants. So then
since then, um, there's the deer. Farming is not really regulated.
And also deer are not really easy to keep in captivity.
(14:50):
They like to jump and like when fences, fences blow down,
and so they'll get out of captivity. And like also
other deer they like come up to you know, captive
deer and they're like, yo, what's up with you though
you're in a cage, huh, And so you can actually
see them. They'll interact through the fence. Um, and that's
probably how it got out of containment, is through interactions
and you know, servants being spread around the country. And
(15:13):
so now chronic waste disease is found in thirty states
I think four Canadian provinces, UH, Scandinavia and Korea, So
I think it's four or five countries. So so it's
out there. It's out there. Um, and it's it's infecting
certain populations across the US and across the across Canada,
(15:34):
the world. Um, it's real bad. It's real bad. So
it seems like a problem. Yeah. Yeah, So if you're
a deer, what happens is you either interact with to
pick up chronic wasting disease. We'll go through the deer
kind of the progression and dear to pick it up.
Do you either interact with the deers that has chronic
wasting disease? You go up and smell them, you look
them a little bit, deer groom each other, you know,
(15:56):
the the animals. Um, you eat plant that another deer
pooped on, now doesn't have to have pooped on that plant.
So like this is a deal. It's effective with chronic
chronic waste disease. Can poop in the soil and the
plant will pick up the prayon from the soil and
then yeah, and then another deer can come in it
can just spread. Yeah cool, that's that's some real scary yeah. Yeah,
(16:21):
And it can also you can also pick it up
from water, but it has spreading in water is really tough.
So um, those are your main vectors is you know,
deer to deer and environment to deer um. And that's
why it's pretty tough to control once it gets into
a state, because to destroy it you have to dig
up the soil and you have to burn it a
thousand degrees for an hour, or you have to expose
(16:42):
exposure to bleach for an hour to destroy the prion
because it's not a living thing, it's a protein. Yeah,
I mean, and there are a couple of towns that
I would be okay doing that too, but on a
wide scale that seems difficult to pull off. Yeah. I
can think of a state that starts with an O
in an age that I wouldn't mind losing, you know,
if we just were like, why not give it a shot? Yeah,
(17:04):
it's just Ohio, come on, it's not it's not a
real state. So in Deer, we we're gonna just we're
gonna stay just in the deer where we're not gonna
get scary yet. So in in Dear, this slowly builds
(17:25):
up throughout the population and you get worst case scenarios
like in south western Wisconsin where like the deer harvested
h bucks harvested a year are positive for chronic wasting disease,
and because it's an always fatal you know, brain disease,
you're looking at population collapse in extinction. Yeah, because it
(17:47):
remains in the soil too, Like it's it's around for
at least two probably more years. But the studies we've
done our only two years. Because um, these are not
fun things to study. People have died studying these diseases
from prions like and they when they've done work on
like BSc laptech actually pricked herself with the tool uh
and got um c j c j D and died
(18:09):
from it. So yeah, they're not fun to study really,
you know that's this is like we're talking like Martians
suit style study stuff. It's not fun. So yeah, the
stand level ship yeah yeah, yeah exactly. Yeah. So so
like you know it without you know, when chronic waste
(18:31):
disease is not addressed into your populations, like in southeastern
or southwestern Wisconsin, you're looking at extinction level stuff because
all of the deer that are out there are most
you know se them have chronic waste disease or at
some point in getting chronic waste disease, which means that
they're putting more and more of in the environment and
they're more like, if you're a non infected deer, you're
(18:51):
you know, three cores. Your buddies are infected, so you're
gonna get chronic wasting disease and be dead within two
or three years. So you're looking at extinction of all
servants in that area for some amount of time until
it comes out of the soil. That's bad. That is
a problem, yes, yeah, yeah, as we have established, neither
of us are dear, So why do we care? I
(19:12):
mean outside of like the fact that deer are pretty
important to the ecology of local areas and that that
collapses bad? Yeah, why what is what is the problem? Like,
what is the risks to human beings beyond that? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
we we we put in college all aside all the time,
like this is the world. We don't really care about that. Yeah,
(19:32):
I ideal with what happened that you pretty college aside,
so I'm super used to that that being done. So
the risk is if it jumps into humans because all
of a sudden, you have a disease that's really hard
to detect that can live in the environment, that can
be transferred from not just spinal fluid, but like if
(19:53):
you eat a lot of infected meat from deer. You know,
if you eat um, some of the organs you can
get at a high risk. So so you know, all
of a sudden, you have a large portion of the
population that could be exposed through direct consumption. But the
other thing is is prians are really hard to kill.
I said, they live in soil. They also live on steel, services,
glass surfaces, every like surface that they've tested like trying
(20:16):
to kill prions, like you know, putting prions on seeing
how long they live there hang out there. There was
some surgical equipment that was infected with the prion gave
someone chronic wasting not crying c j D three years
after using it out someone who had um c j
D G. Yeah, and that's like you know, surgical great
stainless steel stuff so like not supposed to hold things
(20:36):
gets like cleaned, but not like super like not prian
level cleaning because they didn't know about at the time.
So so there's there's the risk is is is it
could potentially develop into a human something that impacts human's
like right now, it hasn't. We do have eight different
variations of it out there in the landscape. And as
more and more do you are exposed to it, what happens,
(21:00):
We get more and more variations of it because that's
just what happens in nature, as we're all becoming familiar
with with COVID. Yeah, it keeps changing because it's nothing
has been done to stop it from spreading. Yeah, and
like the only thing you can do to stop it
is just like reduced deer numbers. You can't really eliminate
out of the landscape because it's in the soil. Yeah,
(21:20):
and you can't you can't test live dear for it.
You gotta kill him to do it. There's they are developed.
There are some tests being developed to determine if animals
are infected UM that are faster, but you know, it's
still it's still in progress. So that's called art quick.
It's a protein test that's that's much faster than current testing,
but it's still in progress. So the thing that really
(21:43):
scares me is the other, well, the other thing about
that makes chronic wasting to is different from you know
bs mad cow diseases. Mad cow was in cows that
we're in you know, captive spaces and you know know
where the cows are. Yeah, it's a problem, but it's
a problem that you can, like with enough fire and
(22:06):
or other tools eradicate. Yeah. Yeah, And it didn't it
didn't seem to be you know, very president soil. And
it was like you had defeat dead cows to dead
cow to live cows to get them infected. Chronic waste
disease is a different beast. Um. So the real scary
potential here is that it's in soil, so you can
get into plants. And we know that plants get transmit
(22:28):
chronic waste disease other deer, so it could you know,
transmitted to other animals like things that eat plants. You know,
for example, you and I eat plants. If you're an American,
you eat corn and a couple of different forms. Um,
dear love hanging out in corn fields. Oh yeah, So
there is an exposure vector right there, and it's you know,
(22:50):
when you're doing when you're processing corn in corncer Let's say, um,
you take a bunch of corn from a bunch of
the places, uh sposh it up grind it up. You know,
you do a bunch of stuff to it in on
steel surfaces, and you don't need to a thousand degrees
for an hour. So all of a sudden you have
like a case of soda that could be infected with
chronic wasting disease. There's the potential, the big potential damage
(23:12):
if this ship jumps to people, which it hasn't yet.
I want to be really clear about that, so we're
not causing to. But if it does, the containment thing
is like even in order of magnitude beyond fucking COVID
ship right Like, it's because it's spread through the soil.
It gets into the fucking basic ingredients of food, and
we we simply the way that we process that stuff
(23:33):
isn't set up in a way that will eliminate it.
Right now, Yeah, and I would tell you you really
can't on a large scale, like process anything that's then
make it safe from you know, like chronic wasting disease,
because you have to, like you know, if you if
you like cut up like let's let's let's go back
to like assuming like you know, it's just in you
(23:54):
you're handling an affected deer. If you cut that deer up.
You use your knife, you gotta put it in bleach
for an hour and then you can come back to
it just really corrosive, so eventually destroy your knife. There's
there's your end thing there. But you can also be
through your hands, you know, touching it, you can get it. Um. Yeah,
so there's there's a scary part there. I mean, like
you like as you pointed out, and I started, I
really totally failed on my part to mention it hasn't
(24:15):
jumped to humans. Yes, not, we are not saying you
are going to get the disease tomorrow. That is not
the but it also like isn't it like there's nothing
that says it can't jump to humans? Right right right exactly? So, Um,
there have been a number of like three or four.
There are two studies I know, I I there's a
(24:35):
third one I've heard about. UM looking at if you know,
human like animals can get chronic waste and disease. So
that's macaques, which are a kind of monkey. UM. And
when they have been fed chronic you know, meat and
infected with chronic waste disease UM, and they were exposed
to blood, they were fed it, they were exposed to
(24:56):
blood and so it was just injective right into the
back of their brain stem. Um monkey's got chronic wasting disease,
so it looks like it's possible. Um. And then also hamsters,
which are also used as a human standing, have also
been fed meat infected with chronic wasting disease and they
were able to get it, and they really get it
from a number of different sources. Um. There are some
(25:18):
really like fun and by fun, I mean scary papers
out there about like all the ways like chronic wasting
disease moves around and survives. Uh. And the studies about
like using human standings are not always fun to read.
And this is this is definitely one of those things
where it's like, yeah, what is the other option other
(25:40):
than yeah, you have to try it on ship. That's yeah,
that's that's very unsettling, but like, yeah, what else are
you gonna do? Like this is something you do have
to know, Yeah, yeah, and UM. The other problem with
prions is detection when it comes to like, you know,
different species ease because it presents like Alzheimer's and so
(26:02):
the only way you know that something got up pry
On disease is if you cut their head. If you
cut its head open, you look at its brain, so
um when and in humans, it can take a long
time for these symptoms to present. I think, like if
you look it up on Wikipedia, it's is like the
average like age detection is sixty years and then we're
good fine. Yeah. Yeah, the researchers that I've spoken to
(26:26):
say it takes like forty years for enough prance to
build up in your brain for it to like, you know,
start to show symptoms, so it you know, if it
is to jump, if it jumps the species bearer, the
first time we detected will probably not be the first
time anyone has been infected. Yeah, it will already have
spread quite widely, and then people will hopefully not but yeah,
(26:49):
so so that that's the scary part. That that's the
human side scary part. But you know, we don't always
have to keep human side scary. Sometimes. You know, things
work in you know, monkeys and hamsters that don't work
in humans. And we've cured cancer, you know, hundreds of
times in mice, right, yeah, and in humans it's a
lot harder to do because we're not mice, we're not monkeys,
we're humans. So it doesn't always work like that. But
(27:11):
the the other scary part is when it comes to
agriculture and the impact on agriculture. So pigs can pick
up chronic wasting disease. There what's called a prian amplifier,
so they can pick it up. They can like you know,
hangs out in them, just find it doesn't kill pigs
at all. They can people. That's true. That's the truth
(27:34):
right there, that's the truth. Yeah. So so you know,
if if it you know, as people, you know, government's
become more aware of it and more concerned about it.
There there's the real possibility of you know, agricultural exports
getting hammered on, you know, exporting it because you know
other countries you know, are concerned about spreading it. So
(27:55):
right now, you know it's pretty hard to well, it's
getting increasingly the harder to export. Live dear is probably
should be Probably farming servants is not a great idea
for their health and ours. But um, you know, also
there's the concern about spread. So if if chronic wasting
disease is you know, crosses from humans to cows like
we've seen you know, like if you know BSc just
(28:17):
pops up in some cows you know that might be
from chronic wasting disease, and the impact of that is
going to be huge. I mean Canada, they were shut
out of the Japanese market for fourteen years, Japanese beef
market for fourteen years following a case of mad cow
disease and two thousand and six they got let back
in two years ago and the studies and that was
like a couple of billion dollars in damage to the
(28:38):
Canadian beef market. So you know, and that was BSc,
which does not do it doesn't transfer via plant, So
imagine it's the US you know, agricultural export market market
got shut down for plants that like economic damage is incalculable. Yeah,
so let's just get a part about chronic wasting. This
(29:00):
These those are all the scarinesses. That's what keeps me
up at night. This is frightening and important for people
to be aware of because it's a serious threat. Are
there things that can be done at the moment? Like,
(29:22):
is there is there inactionable You're not just like not
on a what can our audience do? But like, is
there a thing that could potentially be done by you know,
states or the federal government never that would help this, Like,
is there actually do we do it? Do we have
any fucking idea of like what could be done to
make it less likely for the kind of nightmare scenarios
that we've alluded to to occur here. Yeah, So the
(29:45):
best kit, you know, the best things we can do
are to you know, hunt deer, reduced der population, so
that way you're you know, taking deer out that might
be infected. And when you hunt deer in most areas
that infected you there's a you test them for free
with your state or various authorities, and so then those
carcasses are destroyed so you can remove you know, disease
off the landscape that way. Um. And then by also
(30:06):
just hunting deer, you reduce population levels and so you
make it you make the disease loading in the landscape
lower and it less likely to spread, you know, both
to other deers and then potentially vector to other animals
exposed to other animals. Um, excuse me. New York is
a great example of this. They had a case of
chronic waste and disease pop up, took it out really,
you know, hunted that area hard. I think that they
(30:28):
even brought in professionals and did some real serious deer
reduction and they haven't had a case since. So you know,
in areas where it pops up, you can just hammer
it with you know, lethal removal of animals, harvesting whatever,
and um, you can prevent spread um, and you cannot.
You can really not get back the other thing we
got to do. We need to be very serious about.
(30:49):
We need to take the captive servant industry. So I've
used the word serve a couple of times. They never
defined it. My apologies. Servants are members of the deer family,
so elk moose, Yeah, seek a deer, all those guys
red deer fatility or what a bunch of them. Um.
We need to make sure that we're very closely regulating
that industry because of the potential spread. There was a
farmer in Wisconsin that sent like almost four hundred different
(31:12):
infected deer to like a hundred nineties seven different farms
um over the course of like four years. So you know,
it's regulation is incredibly important. UM. And it's it's rarely
you know, it's not really enough on most farms my
home state here we have UM. You know, if you
(31:33):
make less than ten thousand dollars from your servant farm.
You don't have to report it, you don't have to
track it or anything. That's a real problem because we
are experiencing expanding chronic waste disease. So regulation, you know,
that's fun. Maybe we just shouldn't be farming servants. Maybe
that's bad. Yeah, I don't disagree with you at all there. Yeah,
not not a fan. Yeah. From the ethical standpoint too,
(31:56):
there's there's many I raise a several different raise bunnies
and chickens and goats, and I help raise sheep for
for meat. Uh, there's plenty of different things that you
can raise for meat that are used to it because
we've been raising them for meat for like tens of
thousands of fucking years. Like the sheep. I have orangoras,
(32:17):
which I didn't go back like two years, Like they're
they're they're they're meant for it. We have changed them
into animals that are supposed to be raised for meat.
Don't take new animals and try to farm them like
that because it seems like it causes problems. Yeah, Well,
there's a really neat there's a really neat work out
there about the about domestications stress and like you know,
(32:38):
domestic kid sheep don't care about being domesticated, whereas like
they've compared like domesticated cheap to wildcheep. Wild cheep die
really quick when you put in domestication from the stress.
But yeah, like you said, uh, maybe maybe we don't
maybe we don't play around with some of these animals
to try to force them to do human what we
humans want them to do. You know, it's okay for
animals to just be animals. Not wrong with that. Um. Yeah.
(33:00):
So the other thing, there was a large amount of
money set aside, and I can't remember which legislative packager
was they got defeated a while back that put money
towards chronic wasting disease research. So you know, legislators and
states can be you know, legislatures and government can be
taken seriously putting money towards it. Right now, it's there's
not a lot of money going towards it because it's like, yeah,
it's a zombie deer thing who cares. Yeah, well, you
(33:22):
could get into this is not just a problem for
deer hunters. This could be a real issue for everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
So yeah, I mean, I mean it's kind of like
a larger symptomatic thing to we don't really take environmental
problems that seriously. Um yeah, yeah, I mean the Yeah,
the scary thing about this is we don't treat the
(33:43):
environmental problem seriously. When everyone's saying, like, hey, the consequences
that like all of Florida will be uninhabitable, right, Like,
we don't take that seriously. So when you're saying, this
is much wonkier, which is definitely a barrier to effective action. Yeah.
I did a legislative test money about chronic wasting disease
a couple of months back, and no one was paying attention,
(34:04):
but you know, it made me feel good. I was
doing something. Oh he was a fun thing about Florida
and chronic wasting disease. So Florida, you know, full of
invasive species. Obviously it has chronic waste disease. Like, yeah,
it's a Florida obviously, gotta pick up a new disease.
You know what else is in Florida? Colonies of maccaques.
There's like two colonies of I was unaware of that. Yeah.
(34:28):
Was it because people were an ill advisedly keeping pets?
I think one of them started that way, and I
think one of them was like some monkeys that have
been like kept for testing or zoo stuff escaped. But
there are at least like two colonies of like maccaques
in Florida, which also has chronic waste disease, So you know,
there's I don't think the chronic they're like near the Everglades.
(34:48):
I don't think chronic waste disease made that far south
of Florida. So there's a there's a fun possibility of
the lab experiments under highly control conditions getting um, you know,
performed in in the wild setting, and we could see
if if mccax can pick up chronic waste disease in
the wild. Um, there's a there's a fun research project
for someone who uh, you know is able to handle
dark sides of things. Yeah, thank you Florida, Um, but
(35:13):
more importantly, thank you flow right uh. And a lot
of people are unaware of this was just a couple
of years ago in the Eurovision Song Awards representing San Marino.
So you know, twenty two overall not bad. Yeah, that's
pretty good, better than I could do. Good day. And also,
(35:37):
you are not technically a citizen of the Republic of
San Marino. No, but yet they offered me citizenship. I
would consider it absolutely. Who wouldn't want to be a
citizen of the most serene Republic of San Marino. Yeah.
I I've looked at Andorra, so you know, it would
be a really we're looking at European micro nations. I
mean if and Dora came knock in versus San Marino,
(35:57):
obviously San Maria is getting kicked to the curb of
that like dual like government between the President of France
and like the Pope of or not the Bishopah, it's
like a bishop of like somewhere in Italy. Yeah, it's
very funny. Um. Yeah, you gotta love those weird little
micro republics. Yeah. Um so okay, well this has been great. Yeah,
(36:21):
I'm glad this is happening. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool and fun. Yeah.
I'm not usually fun to hang out with my talk
about work stuff, I know. But it's like it's again,
people need to be aware of this, Like this is
one of those just in the same way that like
people were talking about for years prior to COVID. Hey,
we we actually really need to be aware, like a
(36:41):
coronavirus could break out and it will spread really quickly
due to the way that global travel and transit and
stuff works, and it'll be almost impossible to control. Um,
you know, we should we should build structures into our
societies to make it easier for us to deal with
a coronavirus, which we didn't do, but maybe we'll do
it this time. Yeah, well, what makes it really fun?
(37:03):
I'm just gonna I'm gonna build off you for a second.
You've fallen into my trap. Here. The same people who
were writing about like mers and predicted you know, I
can't remember from which game first Merser Stars. I can't
rember which one. The same people who predicted that and
then who are also predicting um COVID are also talking
about chronic wasting disease. So it's like, you know, I
(37:25):
really hope you don't get to be right on this one.
You know, I just want you to lose one of
these times here, Bud. You're a nice guy, real smart guy,
But can you be wrong occasionally, just for just for
like you know, old time's sake, Just be nice to me. Yeah, well,
there we go. Um, that's been a fun episode. Everybody
(37:48):
have a good time. Um, thank you, Calvin, do you
have anything you want to like plug before we roll
out here. Yeah, I would like to plug. Trees' is
real neat try that we are supported by trees. Um,
not the plant, but a club in Dallas that I
took ecstasy at once. That's a primary sponsors, physically supported
(38:09):
by trees. My computers on wood so oh excellent? Yeah?
Is that also good? Yeah, trees like to plug. Also
getting outside, that's good for you. Do that consolutely, get
outside for sure. Yeah. Uh. Tweet tweets from from birds,
I don't do the twitters, not from Twitter, Yes, definitely. Yeah,
those are things that I'd like to plug. Yeah. Replacing
(38:30):
the tweets from Twitter that you encounter with tweets from
birds is probably among the best things you can do
for your mental health, unless it's this one bird that
lived outside of my apartment in Los Angeles. But anyway,
um well, Calvin, thank you for coming on. I appreciate
your expertise, even though it's always deeply unsettling. Um, that's
(38:52):
gonna do it for all of us here today, And
it could happen here, by which I mean you and me.
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website
cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(39:13):
listen to podcasts, you can find sources for It could
happen here, Updated monthly at cool zone media dot com
slash sources. Thanks for listening.
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