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