[HN Gopher] When people ate people, a strange disease emerged (2...
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When people ate people, a strange disease emerged (2016)
Author : ekianjo
Score : 120 points
Date : 2021-05-09 08:05 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| radarsat1 wrote:
| I'm curious, if it's a "misfolding protein" (my knowledge of
| biology is not sufficient to know what "misfolding" means here, I
| understand that proteins fold, but "misfolding" is a mystery to
| me), then what is the reproducing mechanism?
|
| My understanding is that viruses reproduce themselves by
| hijacking the DNA (or RNA?) in cells. DNA being a cell
| reproduction mechanism that copies protein structures. But what
| is it about a particular protein that can make itself reproduce
| and infect the body?
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| My (admittedly, very layman) understanding is that prions are
| proteins that are misfolded in such a way that when in
| proximity or contact with their 'correctly folded' version can
| induce them to change shape to the misfolded version. Prions
| are below the level of things like viruses or bacteria -- they
| are a result of the underlying chemistry of making proteins.
| Proteins and their folding is arranging atoms into
| energetically favorable states. A prion is then a different
| arrangement of the atoms that is somewhat more energetically
| favorable, one that can induce other proteins to transition to
| this different state. It is this last property that makes them
| infectious.
| adammunich wrote:
| It catalyzes others like ice-9
| teachingassist wrote:
| Proteins are produced as a string (either literally as a chain
| molecule, or in the computer science sense of a string of
| characters/amino acids).
|
| Once a protein is formed in the body, it naturally folds into
| its useful, functional shape with the purpose it was designed
| for.
|
| A 'misfolding protein' is then a folding into a stable shape
| which is not desired.
|
| A 'prion' is a misfolding protein that encourages other
| proteins of the same type to misfold in the same way - maybe by
| acting as an incorrect template for folding. When this is
| folded in a way that is difficult for the body to break down,
| and somehow enabling its sibling proteins to do the same, you
| start to have problems.
|
| So, a prion is a protein structure able to reproduce itself, in
| some way. Prions are not 'viruses', where viruses have their
| own DNA (or RNA) for making their own proteins.
|
| There's an argument about whether viruses are 'alive', since
| they depend on others' cells to make their proteins. Prions are
| even less considered 'alive' - they are just inert single
| protein molecules folded in a particular way. But, they have
| the ability to reproduce, in some sense.
| achenatx wrote:
| a reasonable definition for alive is that they carry their
| own energy production mechanism to reproduce. They can intake
| materials, produce energy, and reproduce.
|
| If we created robots that could harvest their own raw
| materials to produce energy and reproduce, then they would be
| alive too.
| mywacaday wrote:
| I've always understood that viruses are not alive but does
| the statement "since they cannot reproduce without depending
| on others' cells..." Not also cover plants that require
| insects for pollination?
| teachingassist wrote:
| Plants are unambiguously considered alive by this
| definition, because they do make their own proteins.
|
| I edited to make this clearer.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| OP's argument is a little bit unorthodox. Generally
| maintaining homeostasis is seen as a threshold for life and
| that's why viruses are often excluded, they cannot really
| maintain internal state.
| teachingassist wrote:
| I deliberately said it's an argument ;-)
|
| There's no clearly agreed definition of 'life', and in my
| opinion, scientists are moving gradually towards an idea
| that viruses should count as life. Hank Green recently
| posted that he finds it obvious that viruses are alive.
|
| The argument that viruses are not life has become a bit
| circular - viruses are not life, therefore, we have to
| come up with awkward definitions of life that exclude
| viruses.
|
| You've posited a different definition, which I'd suggest
| is very close to mine - 'maintaining homeostasis' is
| meant to express the idea that a cell is able to produce
| its own proteins in order to control its own environment
| to its own benefit.
|
| [When a virus changes that environment to suit its own
| needs, we don't want viruses to be considered life, so we
| don't call that 'homeostasis' any more - at least, we
| don't when we're talking about the context of what 'life'
| is. There are plenty of academic papers that do call this
| homeostasis, considering homeostasis as an interplay
| between cells and its viral infections.]
| pmoriarty wrote:
| What are the consequences of considering viruses to be
| alive vs not alive?
| mLuby wrote:
| What are some macroscopic examples where a group of stable
| things change to match a differently configured stable thing
| introduced into their midst?
|
| Maybe a stampede, where creatures were stationary until one
| bolts and then the ones around it start running too?
|
| Or a standing ovation, where people standing in front block
| the vision of those behind who stand up too until everyone is
| in their feet?
|
| Or dominos arranged upright in a line and then one is placed
| lying against a neighboring upright domino?
| jcims wrote:
| Zombie apocalypse.
| gruez wrote:
| Aren't those usually caused by some sort of a contagion?
| jcims wrote:
| Yes! In this case the contagion is the alternate
| metastable state of the protein that is passed from one
| to the other on contact. After which, the previously
| healthy protein quits its job, leaves its family and
| starts hunting for fresh victims.
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| Many things. In CS, gossip-protocol based DB systems. In
| chemistry and physics, phase transitions. Many processes
| like nucleation/crystallization during freezing are very
| similar.
|
| When simulated, the code generally resembles cellular
| automata. Look up Ising model simulation if you want a
| better understanding.
| [deleted]
| bashinator wrote:
| > protein that encourages other proteins of the same type to
| misfold in the same way.
|
| Gotta wonder if this is a clue about abiogenesis.
| string wrote:
| I've tried to read about prions a few times and never really
| grasped the mechanism, so this was a really informative
| explanation, thank you.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| In terms of folding, you can imagine a protein as balls on
| a string, where each ball has some extra stuff on its
| surface. One may have a bit of velcro hooks here and a
| small magnet there (N outwards). Another one may have some
| surface adhesive and a S-outwards magnet. Another one,
| velcro loops and a blob of adhesive. Etc. You put such a
| string of balls in a box and shake it for a while. After
| you're done, you'll have a somewhat stable structure made
| of various balls connected by their relevant attachment
| mechanisms. If you were clever at designing the original
| string of balls, you could make it highly probable that any
| such string would reach _the same_ connected structure
| after being tumbled a bit.
|
| Proteins are like that. The connections are chemical bonds;
| velcro, magnets and glue represent different structures on
| protein pieces that allow some kids of bonds to form with
| given strengths, and disallow others. The tumbling/shaking
| part is matter and temperature - in a living organism,
| everything mostly keeps bumping into everything else at
| random, and in particular, there's plenty of water
| molecules to push things around randomly. Pieces of protein
| thus keep connecting and disconnecting with other pieces,
| until the whole molecule reaches a stable state where the
| constant bumping isn't enough to break any of the bonds.
| That's how proteins fold.
|
| Somehow, it turns out that any given protein tends to
| almost always fold into a very specific shape (which is
| currently impossible for us to compute a-priori, given just
| an ordered list of amino acid residues). But there are
| other possible shapes that a protein can sometimes reach,
| which are also stable but do not let it perform the
| functions the body needs it to. That's bad - such a protein
| is at best useless, at worst disruptive, and stability
| makes it hard for the body to get rid of it. Then there
| sometimes are stable shapes whose presence cause other
| similar proteins to fold to that same shape, instead of the
| one they'd ordinarily do - that's prions. That's very bad
| news. They reproduce through catalyzing creation of more of
| them, and their stability means they can just linger around
| after the host organism has died, and it's not easy to
| destroy them through boiling or denaturing agents.
| cgriswald wrote:
| I'm not clear on the mechanism by which the prion
| encourages other proteins to fold the same way. Is the
| protein interacting with the other protein directly like
| an Ice IX situation? Is it an interaction between the
| body and the prion, like the prion causing the body to
| create an enzyme which interacts which then folds the
| next protein? Something else?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| From what I've read, it seems accepted that the mechanism
| is closer to Ice-nine - a bad protein shows up next to a
| good one, and causes the latter to re-fold into a copy of
| the bad one. The exact mechanism of this is not known.
| Leherenn wrote:
| That was really instructive, thanks.
|
| Could you develop a bit the last part please? How does it go
| from "you have accumulating useless proteins in your body" to
| "you die"? Is it because too many "good" proteins are turned
| into "bad" proteins and thus you don't have enough anymore to
| function properly? Is it because the "bad" proteins somehow
| "clog" the system? Something else?
| teachingassist wrote:
| Either of these theories [not enough good protein/too much
| bad protein] could contribute to disease, yes.
|
| The correct function of the disease-causing 'major prion
| protein' in humans is not known, so I think the answer is
| "we don't quite know which of these factors is more
| important".
|
| We observe that diseased brains have 'plaques' where they
| have been turned into sponge, so-called "spongiform
| encephalopathy". The brain's neurons have simply died, one
| way or another.
| jcims wrote:
| I'm sure the latter is possible in some way but the common
| prion-based diseases kill by misfolding functional proteins
| in the body (or in this case the brain). As the misfolding
| spreads, the cells in the immediate vicinity are destroyed
| and ultimately the surrounding tissue.
|
| You can google it if you want, but the end result is a
| brain that is essentially turned into a sponge with voids
| throughout.
| rsync wrote:
| "There's an argument about whether viruses are 'alive', since
| they depend on others' cells to make their proteins. Prions
| are even less considered 'alive' ..."
|
| I have read several proposals for a "viral LUCA" in the past
| ... does anyone ever suggest a prion LUCA[1] ?
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_universal_common_ancestor
| teachingassist wrote:
| > does anyone ever suggest a prion LUCA[1]
|
| Yes, it totally makes sense to talk about a common
| ancestor!
|
| There's one known prion-disease-causing protein in humans,
| the "major prion protein".
|
| You can see the gene containing the code for this protein
| in human DNA, and any mammal DNA has a similar gene that is
| still very closely related. This suggests that the protein
| has some important function(s) in mammals, and has a common
| ancestor before these species existed.
|
| Genes that have a shared history but are less closely
| related (and don't appear to cause disease) can be found
| for example also in zebrafish ('Shadoo' gene) and in humans
| ('Doppel' gene).
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15449459/
| indiv0 wrote:
| It's not just a misfolded protein, it's a misfolded protein
| that catalyzes other proteins (with the same chemical
| structure) to misfold. So proximity of a "good" protein to a
| "bad" protein is sufficient to turn the "good" protein "bad".
|
| It's an interesting hypothesis to consider that there could be
| other prion variations out there that misfold other types of
| proteins, but they don't misfold the "good" versions of
| themselves, so they don't self-replicate and instead just
| create one-off instances of a broken protein.
| radarsat1 wrote:
| Huh, that's very interesting. I certainly didn't know that
| protein folding could be influenced by other proteins around
| them; I guess I sort of thought that proteins and their
| structure were fully defined by DNA. But it makes sense.. if
| a particular folding has an unstable point (ie., could go one
| way or another), it would naturally be influenced by the
| forces around it in addition to its "code". Thanks for the
| insight!
| uwagar wrote:
| wow, one wonders what the spike protein made by the covid-19
| vaccines could do...the narrative appears presenting just a
| protein for the immune system to tackle instead of the whole
| virus is without risk.
| MertsA wrote:
| >wow, one wonders what the spike protein made by the covid-19
| vaccines could do
|
| Here's what it does.
| https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.121.31890...
|
| >presenting just a protein for the immune system to tackle
| instead of the whole virus is without risk.
|
| The level of S protein produced from a vaccine is substantially
| less than someone infected with SARS-CoV-2. Covid-19 is not a
| prion disease, the protein doesn't cause any kind of catalytic
| misfolding of other proteins. No one said new vaccines are
| without risk, that's why even a one-in-a-million reaction
| causing blood clots was enough to halt the administration of
| the J&J vaccine until it could be studied further. These
| vaccines have been studied for over a year on a massive chunk
| of the world population, any kind of adverse reaction that
| hasn't already been caught would have to be so rare that no
| matter what demographic we're talking about you're at
| substantially greater risk of harm from Covid-19 than from any
| as of yet unknown side effect of any of the mainstream
| vaccines.
| harles wrote:
| > But it wasn't a virus -- or a bacterium, fungus, or parasite.
| It was an entirely new infectious agent, one that had no genetic
| material, could survive being boiled, and wasn't even alive.
|
| This is the most interesting part to me.
| gambiting wrote:
| Well because it's "just" a protein which by itself isn't alive.
| It's like how heavy water(water where the hydrogen atom is
| replaced by a deuterium atom) will eventually kill you if
| ingested in large quantities, because your body just doesn't
| recognize it as any different from normal water - it takes the
| molecules and builds stuff with it, but because it's not
| _quite_ the same, things start breaking down eventually.
|
| This is roughly the same - body takes this protein in, "thinks"
| it's a different type of protein, the resulting cell is
| "broken" diseases follow.
|
| You'd literally need to break that protein down so that it's
| completely destroyed, either with extremely high
| temperatures(not boiling) or with acids. People think of it
| like bacteria and then are surprised it can't be "killed" -
| well it can't be killed because it's just a basic building
| block, it just happens to be defective.
| harles wrote:
| My expectation is that most proteins would be broken down
| into their amino acids before being absorbed. Maybe it's just
| the law of large numbers that lets some through? It seems
| like a pretty spectacular feat to be cooked, digested, and
| enter the brain intact.
| xallarap wrote:
| It's not from ppl eating ppl, it's from ppl eating ppls brains,
| specifically.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| If God didn't mean for people to eat each other, then they
| wouldn't be made out of meat! ;)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjAHw2DEBgw&ab_channel=Vario...
| roenxi wrote:
| Revulsion is a "seriously, this is a bad idea" signal from
| evolution.
|
| Do a quick inventory and see just how many psychological barriers
| there are to cannibalism. Considering how important calories have
| been for most of history and what a 'traditional' diet looks ...
| it must be really be a mistake to eat people.
| eatonphil wrote:
| I'm fine with focusing on the ethical/moral reasons against
| cannibalism.
|
| I was revolted by fish, squid, and tofu as a kid until I forced
| myself to get used to them as an adult.
|
| I still find the thought of eating insects revolting but there
| are many valid ways to do so.
| CyanBird wrote:
| That's a postdoc rationalization based on your western
| perspectives
|
| There are more than a few cultures which disprove your general
| angle, on South East Asia there are still a couple cannibal
| groups, which base their cannibalism on eating perceived
| witches and did it on a semiritualistic fashion to ensure that
| the witches spirits could not come back and haunt them/put a
| spell on them
|
| There are many, many, many references of through the discovery
| of SEA islets of colonizers finding Cannibal tribes and groups
| whom would instead eat them to (is through) acquiring "their
| power" which is a strong motif that's replicated on West and
| Central African animistic groups and tribes
|
| Do remember reading of more than a couple times several years
| ago of reading East European cannibal tribes through the 700s,
| and this was beyond the post Roman vilification of "barbarians"
|
| Anyhow my core is that, this is quite, quite common throughout
| human history, same with human sacrifice
|
| Apologies for lack of references I am on my phone, I'll add
| them later
| alien_player wrote:
| First thing that came to mind: "It's something prion related."
| erdo wrote:
| I'd never heard of cannibalism outside of "eating your enemies"
| this explanation is really touching and quite sad
| LatteLazy wrote:
| It comes up a lot, especially in areas that lack a natural
| protein source (eg Papua New Guinea or parts of Africa). People
| aren't really short of calories but they lack other nutrients
| so...
| orwin wrote:
| And even then, you didn't eat your enemy whole. It was the
| hearth or another important organ depending on the current
| culture.
| haunter wrote:
| You never heard of survival cannibalism? Donner party, Flight
| 571 etc.
| erdo wrote:
| Oh that's true, I'd forgotten about that - (cannibalism is
| not something I generally think about much at all to be
| honest!)
| hackflip wrote:
| Not thinking about cannibalism is a luxury for the well
| fed.
| StavrosK wrote:
| I think I dislike this comment because it somehow manages
| to turn a good situation into a privilege you should be
| guilty of.
| dessant wrote:
| People were selling body parts for cooking during the Russian
| Revolution.
|
| NSFL:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921%E2%80%9...
|
| Widespread cannibalism has also been documented in the Soviet
| Union.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#Cannibalism
| erdo wrote:
| Thanks for that link, I was aware that Stalin was responsible
| for a famine resulting in millions of deaths, but had no idea
| of the details
| philjohn wrote:
| You should read up about Trofim Lysenko who was the real
| architect of the famine.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Absolutely not.
|
| Your rendition of history is horribly wrong, I mean
| "Batman fought Hitler on a tyrannosaurus in WWI" levels
| of wrong.
| philjohn wrote:
| Please expand then on what the causes of the famine were.
| echlebek wrote:
| "Architect" seems a bit strong but the article on him
| says he contributed to famine in the USSR and China. http
| s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko#Consequences_of.
| ..
| quietreaderess wrote:
| (OT) Short-News: On wednesday, president Biden founded a
| 'pre-crime'-agency to crimialize 'wrongthink'
|
| Quoting: 'The best set of traits to survive, were passed
| down to the next generation'
|
| Questioning: 'We know headedness would'nt be our heritage,
| but weakness is?'-Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin ? (-;
|
| I am now unsure if that (Biden) is the old fight of the
| communists against socialism and 'dissenters' from the
| 'general line' like you may investigate @Trotzky
|
| Feel free to translate, en.wiki has much words but not that
| 'concrete'
|
| > //de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotzki#Machtkampf_mit_Stalin
|
| _uh_ that political... ^^
| erdo wrote:
| Weirdly the name of this tribe happens to be an exact match for
| the name of an android library that I publish - needless to say
| it didn't come up when I googled potential names :)
| asimjalis wrote:
| Do you mean the name Fore?
| medstrom wrote:
| Does cannibalism have an inherent propensity to create/spread
| prions or is it just incidental?
| philipswood wrote:
| (Ignoring prions for now)
|
| Eating your own kind should definitely expose you to pathogens,
| infections and parasites that are directly compatible with you.
|
| I think in nature it would tend to be a bad strategy due to
| this, even though in cases it would make a lot of sense
| otherwise.
|
| IIRC the SF novel 'The Legacy of Heorot' had an alien life
| cycle/population dynamic based on this idea of using
| cannibalism coupled with a staged life-cycle to allow the
| creature to exploit a wider ecological niche. The juveniles
| were herbivores and the adult forms then ate the juveniles,
| forming a joined niche.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| Brains and spinal fluid seem to make it more likely. The PNG
| tribe thought eating the brain of a dead elder would confer
| their wisdom.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Eating infected meat is a way to get infected by prions, which
| otherwise don't really spread.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Wild speculation:
|
| Maybe a lot of humans have prions, and the ones who survive
| until birth are just lucky enough to be genetically immune to
| their own. Cannibalism copies the protein to someone without
| that immunity.
|
| And maybe the proteins of different species are usually too
| incompatible to be dangerous.
| teachingassist wrote:
| It's thought yes:
|
| Continuing my explanation from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27094602
|
| "A 'prion' is a misfolding protein that encourages other
| proteins of the same type to misfold in the same way - maybe by
| acting as an incorrect template for folding."
|
| So, if you introduce a human prion - here by eating a human and
| perhaps brain in particular - it will potentially start this
| process by acting as a first template.
|
| (Other animal prions are typically less likely to start this
| process, since animal proteins will likely be too different)
| asimjalis wrote:
| This is something the article does not make clear. Why can't
| prions be transmitted through eating non-human animals like cows?
| IncRnd wrote:
| The article mentions several times that this does happen.
| taberiand wrote:
| You mean like with mad cow disease? They can.
| mariodiana wrote:
| > [I]t was just a twisted protein, capable of performing the
| microscopic equivalent of a Jedi mind trick, compelling normal
| proteins on the surface of nerve cells in the brain to contort
| just like them. The so-called "prions," or "proteinaceous
| infectious particles," would eventually misfold enough proteins
| to kill pockets of nerve cells in the brain [...]
|
| Disclaimer: Somebody stop me if I'm spreading misinformation,
| because I am way out of my wheelhouse. Honestly, I would like to
| be disabused of this suspicion if it's entirely fanciful. So, if
| someone knows something about what I'm about to discuss, please
| weigh in. The subject is genetically modified organisms.
|
| My understanding is that at least some (if not all) GMO's are
| produced by bombarding an organism's genetic material with
| radiation and then separating out modified organisms that seem to
| be useful. This process, however, does result in misfolded
| proteins. Often, scientists judge that these misfolded proteins
| are of no harm, and so some GMO's (if not all) make it to market
| with misfolded proteins. That's my understanding.
|
| I'm wondering two things. First, is my above account (over-
| simplified in any case) basically right or way off base? Second,
| if it's basically right, aren't we playing a very dangerous game
| with things we don't understand well enough?
| [deleted]
| larssorenson wrote:
| GMO's are _not_ produced by targeted radiation in the way you
| have described, at least not as common practice (i.e. the GMO
| food you buy isn 't created this way). GMO crops are generated
| in two ways: targeted gene modification (with deliberate
| modifications being made in contrast to the randomness of the
| radiation method you described) and crossbreeding (which has a
| more randomized effect but does not involve radiation).
|
| If you look at the [Wikipedia article on genetic engineering te
| chniques](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering_t
| echniqu...) radiation doesn't appear once.
| gregw134 wrote:
| Creating new crop varieties using radiation is a thing, here
| are some wiki articles discussing it:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening https://en.wik
| ipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding#New_mutagen_...
|
| I also remember seeing a news article about using radiation
| to breed new rice variants that have more nutrients, but I
| can't find it anymore.
| larssorenson wrote:
| You're right, it is done. I worded my comment carefully to
| leave room for this because it's hard to prove a negative,
| but I stand by my statement, specificay in refuting the
| implication from the original comment: we aren't
| haphazardly blasting plant genome with radiation, at scalr,
| and guessing it's safe enough to feed to the world. I don't
| have numbers but GMO crops today are by and large the
| result of non-radiation genetic engineering.
| hansvm wrote:
| > My understanding is that at least some (if not all) GMO's are
| produced by bombarding an organism's genetic material with
| radiation and then separating out modified organisms that seem
| to be useful.
|
| GMOs usually refer to a more targeted approach to gene
| introduction. In the US, a food can be labeled organic and GMO-
| free even if it was developed with chemical or radiation
| mutation breeding.
| wirrbel wrote:
| Radiation methods for mutating species are 'traditional'
| methods that have been employed for decades and aren't
| considered GMO. A lot of the standard crops have been developed
| this way.
| knolan wrote:
| Sounds very like Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease[0] which can result
| from the bovine equivalent[1]. There was a major outbreak of 'mad
| cow disease' in the UK and elsewhere and was related to cows
| being fed feedstuff made from offal.
|
| [0]https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/Patient-Caregiver-
| Educat...
|
| [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalop..
| .
| IncRnd wrote:
| Thank you. That is actually well-covered in the article.
|
| The article states this:
|
| "The epidemic likely started when one person in a Fore village
| developed sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a degenerative
| neurological disorder similar to kuru."
|
| And this:
|
| "People have developed variant CJD after eating the meat of
| cattle infected with mad cow disease. Dr. Ermias Belay, a prion
| disease researcher with the Centers for Disease Control and
| Prevention, says that's the only scenario in which there is
| "definitive evidence" that humans can develop a prion disease
| after eating the infected meat of another species."
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Both are mentioned in the article, which points out that the
| suspected outset of kuru was a spontaneous CJD occurrence
| knolan wrote:
| Yes, you're right. That's what I get for skimming the
| article.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| old previous discussions:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14079026
| dkarras wrote:
| Ah was waiting for my daily prion disease dose in hacker news!
| Farmadupe wrote:
| Any chance we've got time for the meta question.. Does anyone
| have a clue why prion diseases are so popular on HN at the
| moment? AFAIK it's not something that often turns up in
| mainstream media? Not even as something they keep in the 'slow
| news day' draw..
|
| Are we genuinely scared by the idea of getting a prion disease?
| Is there an actual risk of a prion epidemic? ..or putting my
| Freud hat on, does everyone on HN share a weird masochistic
| fetish about 'the next big pandemic'?
|
| For my part I don't really get it, but then maybe it's because
| I'm british and for us prion diseases have been boring (or
| rather the news isn't interested in prion diseases) since mad
| cow disease stopped being a thing 20 years ago.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| Someone posted an article recently. Morbidly fascinated
| people dig out more and post that, too. It all performs
| moderately well so karma hunters start doing it for the
| points. Eventually, the audience is saturated with prion
| content and the fad dies down.
| zem wrote:
| the 'at the moment' probably explains it - a lot of online
| fora have, for want of a better word, fads where there is a
| lot of discussion of a particular topic for a brief while,
| then it fades and sooner or later a new topic comes along. I
| quite like the phenomenon personally.
| rozab wrote:
| There's an unexplained outbreak of a weird brain disease in
| Canada. People were theorising that it's a prion disease.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| People are desperate to keep "working" from home.
| FinanceAnon wrote:
| As long as we are not eating our co-workers, I think we
| should be safe to get back into offices
| h0l0cube wrote:
| ... or eating the flesh of _any_ animal
|
| Edit: ... or eating plants:
|
| https://www.virology.ws/2015/06/25/prions-in-plants/
| VortexDream wrote:
| I'm not so sure it is that popular on HN. I don't remember
| seeing any articles all that often before recently with the
| outbreak in Canada. I'll see the topic pop up far more often
| on Reddit, but it's still fairly rare. I think people are
| interested because it is such a terrifying thing that we
| don't have any good solutions for. So it inspires discussions
| whenever somebody reminds everybody else "so, hey, this is
| still a thing" and it makes its rounds.
| jorvi wrote:
| Prions have been posted a lot about before Corona. If I had
| to hazard a guess, it's because they're even more of a curio
| than viruses, bacteria or fungi.
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