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From: David Lowry
Category: Category 1
Date: 8/9/01
Time: 11:10:32 AM
Remote Name: 209.254.248.14
Hi folks, I just kicked off this letter to the editor of Hunting Mag and I thought I'd post it here as well since it may never see the light of day otherwise. Cheers! David Lowry
Dear Editor, like one of your other readers, I too found your article on chronic wasting disease rather alarmist. Although it is certainly prudent to err on the side of safety, I felt the article did not represent a balanced view of what is known about CWD. For instance, the article spends much space saying what CWD is not: its not a virus, etc., but does not say what it is- a protein (called a prion) that misfolds and causes other proteins like it to misfold, eventually turning the structure of your brain into a sponge. The article also mentions that the infective agent can withstand some unusually high temperature (I can't remember, the article is not in front of me at the moment). I can only guess that this was a typographical error since no protein would be intact if brought to that temperature. There is much known about interspecies transmissibility of prions. In fact, much of the research was the subject of a Nobel Prize awarded to Stanley Prusiner. A protein is like a string of beads, the beads each being one of 20 possible amino acids. Basically, if I'm to be infected, the amino acid sequence of my protein needs to be extremely similar to the sequence of the species that is infecting me. It turns out, my protein is extremely different from that of deer or elk and test tube experiments indicate transmissibility is vanishingly small. (See EMBO Journal 2000, 19(17) p4425, Evidence of a Molecular Barrier Limiting Susceptibility of Humans, Cattle and Sheep to Chronic Wasting Disease.) Finally, recent work has shown that CWD has been around Colorado and Wyoming for at least 30 years. I will probably continue to eat venison but I agree with the article that you should be a bit careful with the gray matter. Sincerely, David F. Lowry Ph.D. david.lowry@pnl.gov