“Zombie Deer” disease sounds like something straight out of a movie, but it’s not. It’s real and a new medical report suggests it’s already affecting humans. The illness is medically referred to as a prion disease, very similar to mad cow disease and recently two hunters who consumed venison meat died.
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00:00 [Music]
00:03 Zombie deer disease sounds like something straight out of a movie, but it's not.
00:07 It's real, and a new medical report suggests it's already affecting humans.
00:12 The illness is medically referred to as a prion disease, very similar to mad cow disease,
00:16 and recently two hunters who consumed venison meat died from it.
00:20 According to the report, one of them was a 72-year-old man with symptoms that included
00:24 the sudden onset of confusion and aggression.
00:27 A friend of the man, who the report outlines was a member of the same hunting lodge,
00:31 died later with the same symptoms.
00:33 Doctors were later able to identify prion disease as the cause.
00:36 The specific illness the two men died of is called Croatsfeldt-Jakob disease,
00:41 and it's incurable by modern medicine.
00:43 However, the most concerning thing about these cases is the CDC has never identified
00:47 this particular strain in humans before, meaning this prion disease, often referred to as
00:52 chronic wasting disease, has now made a zoonotic leap into humans.
00:56 Prion diseases affect the body's misfolded proteins, teaching other proteins to misfold
01:01 as well, causing a cascade of malfunctioning proteins.
01:04 In brain tissue, this causes accelerated dementia, one which produces no immune response
01:09 and is therefore impossible to diagnose while the victim is alive.