Health - Resources and discussion for everything health-related

2786 readers

484 users here now

Health: physical and mental, individual and public.

Discussions, issues, resources, news, everything.

See the pinned post for a long list of other communities dedicated to health or specific diagnoses. The list is continuously updated.

Nothing here shall be taken as medical or any other kind of professional advice.

Commercial advertising is considered spam and not allowed. If you're not sure, contact mods to ask beforehand.

Linked videos without original description context by OP to initiate healthy, constructive discussions will be removed.

Regular rules of lemmy.world apply. Be civil.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

‘Don’t call it zombie deer disease’: scientists warn of ‘global crisis’ as infections spread across the US (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Summary

Chronic wasting disease (CWD), an incurable and fatal prion disease affecting deer, elk, moose, and reindeer, is spreading across 36 US states and other countries.

Scientists warn of a potential human spillover crisis, with tens of thousands likely consuming infected venison. Experts criticize labeling it "zombie deer disease" as it downplays the threat.

Concerns include contamination through carcass transport and feedgrounds. Calls grow for better surveillance and prevention, but conflicting policies and resistance to reducing wildlife feedgrounds hinder efforts.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Whilst this may be the case, 49MYa was a long time ago. Any mammals around at the time had probably evolved to deal with fungal infections.

But as the climate cooled back to similar levels that we have had in the recent past (last 200k years) those evolved traits would have been de-selected since they are a cost with no benefit.

The problem with the current warming is that the rate is much higher than in the past, fast evolving creatures (read small, with short generation cycles) can change much more quickly to deal with the new conditions; those of us that evolve much more slowly cannot compete.