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Comment by hokumguru | Hacker News Reader

CJD is the more common prion disease in humans and arguably even more terrifying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creutzfeldt–Jakob_disease

Not so fun fact - the medication HCG is derived from human urine and can possibly pass CJD on. There is no warning on the label, and since CJD takes 20-30 years to kill you once infected we don't really know yet if it's a problem or not.

And I took it for years.

Somehow I had assumed such things were produced using recombinant DNA, but I guess only one brand does it this way.

I'm kind of mind boggled at the concept of pregnant women selling their urine to medical companies. How does this work?

Both Progynon and Emmenin, the first forms of estrogen used (1928-29), were extracted from the urine of pregnant women. The material for Progynon was initially collected in a Berlin's clinic by Shering [1], and the urine needed for Emmenin was presumably sourced through similar channels. [2] mentions how the supply was scarce, as only women in low-income groups were interested in collecting it, and only while other sources of income were not available.

By 1941-1942 they had moved away from human urine to PREgnant MARe urINe, and Premarin was born.

[1] https://books.google.it/books?id=Z3iTsU6_mHsC&pg=PA119&redir...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1661006/?page=2

Similar and just as scary - tainted blood products taken by haemophiliacs leading to countless HIV infections, and plenty of deaths from AIDS.

We also seem to be coming to the realization in the last few years that HPV is likely spread through the sterilization and re-use of gynecological equipment.

Prion diseases as well - they can survive an autoclave.

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