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Comment by nxzero | Hacker News Reader

Prions: Killer Zombies

"You Can't Kill What's Not Alive: Prions cannot be destroyed by boiling, alcohol, acid, standard autoclaving methods, or radiation. In fact, infected brains that have been sitting in formaldehyde for decades can still transmit spongiform disease. Cooking your burger until it is well done will not destroy the prions!" http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/molecules/prions/

"Eating human brains helped Papua New Guinea tribe resist disease, research shows." https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/10/brains-helpe...

Original name for the prions was "trembling in fear" - or Kuru: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)

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So there's no cure, no vaccine, and you can't kill them. Terrifying. An outbreak of this thing would have free pass to eradicate entire species, including us.

Oh, and the incubation time can be extremely long. A burger you ate 5 years ago could've been infected but it could still be years before you begin showing signs. I remember reading a bit about some connection between prions and dementia in elderly individuals but I don't remember any of the details.

One sci-fi horror series had an episode where the plot was that some mass produced chickens were getting ill because the feed was made from other chickens and they eventually discovered that it involved a prion that was dangerous to humans as well. This was discovered after massive numbers of those chickens had been consumed in large quantities by society.

That's literally what happened with the mad cow disease scare if you swap cow for chicken.

No. It is just that we do not have a cure or vaccine because it does not appear that often. And no, prions will not eradicate entire species because they not living under any definition. Therefore there is no direct evolution, if you are resistant against an outbreak, your are resistant against it. The prion cannot develop to overcome this resistance. Essentially, a prion disease is very like the computer virusses we have today: They do not change their source code, so fixing the issue in your code will disable them.

There are self-modifying computer viruses that mutate to avoid detection.

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