Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a prion-based disease that is basically human created/human exacerbated.
CWD, like all the other prion-based diseases like Mad Cow, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) are 100% fatal and unlike bacterial and viral disease agents, prions are extremely difficult to neutralize. Normal autoclave methods and incineration are ineffective at rendering prions not infectious.
Lands and objects once contaminated are, for practical purposes, contaminated for the foreseeable future.
State and federal agencies have been grappling with how to contain the spread of the disease with essentially no success. The disease continues to spread rapidly.
Efforts have mainly been based on increased surveillance and increased culling. In spite of these efforts, the spread has only accelerated.
Recently Jim Keen, D.V.M., Ph.D. published a paper titled Big Cats as Nature’s Check Against Disease – A summary of theoretical, empirical, and experimental evidence supporting predator cleansing of CWD in deer and elk herds by mountain lions and wolves.
What the report demonstrates is that large predators are far superior to humans in detecting diseased animals. Predators can detect diseased animals long before obvious symptoms of disease can be observed.
As a result, simply allowing normal predator prey balance i.e.not rendering top level predators functionally extirpated from ecosystems may be the best approach to dealing with the CWD problem we have created.
For those interested in prion diseases and wildlife health, this report is a must read.
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