Can we be wrong about the causes of the terrible disease of chronic wasting in deer? | Outside

While the scourge of chronic debilitating disease is spreading among deer in Pennsylvania, most recently in Lancaster County, a medical researcher says that the very source of the disease has always been misdiagnosed.

The disease threatens the $ 1.8 billion deer hunting industry in Pennsylvania, as well as the state's popular elk herd. There is also a popular cottage industry in Lancaster County, where there are more than 70 deer farms.

The disease was first discovered in wild deer in the United States in 1981. The first infected deer found in Pennsylvania – in a deer farm – was in Adams County in 2012. Wild deer has were discovered later that year in Blair and Bedford Counties.

Following the discovery of three deer with deer on a captive deer farm near Denver, a quarantine area was created in parts of northern Lancaster County, Berks and Lebanon.

In the area, hunters were required to drop deer heads that they had killed during the past season to check whether the disease had spread to wild deer. Some 345 deer have been picked up. Most have been tested and so far, no infected deer has been found, according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

In the Capitol Rotunda earlier this week, members of one of Pennsylvania's largest hunting groups gathered to pledge money to help Dr. Frank Bastian, neuropathologist and science specialist, pursue his iconoclastic research. at Louisiana State University, who claims to have discovered the true cause of chronic disease. waste of the disease.

Bastian says that wildlife managers who try to avoid the crisis are barking the wrong tree. He has been preaching this for 12 years.

The theory accepted by all wildlife agencies in the country, as well as by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Fish and Wildlife Service of the United States, is that malformed proteins produce particles called prions that cause brain diseases such as chronic debilitating disease, mad cow disease and scrapie of sheep. Neurologist Dr. Stanley Prusiner received the Nobel Prize for this theory in 1997.

But the explanation of the prion is simply false as a cause of chronic wasting disease, insist Bastian and the unified sportsmen of Pennsylvania.

According to Bastian, the source of the disease that kills deer irreproachably is not the prions, but an extremely small bacterium. The prion is only a secondary bacterial byproduct and a marker for deer with chronic debilitating disease, he says.

What about it?

Well everything. Bastian says that, now that he has managed to grow the offending bacteria in a laboratory, he and other researchers can now develop a vaccine in the form of an antibiotic to treat, cure and prevent the disease. disease in captive deer and deer in the wild.

And, he hopes to develop a test kit that hunters can take in the woods and test the deer they kill to see if they are infected with the disease and can be eaten safely. Pennsylvania hunters could be the first to test kits.

Additional research, if supported, could pave the way for timely eradication of the dreaded disease and save deer hunting in Pennsylvania, according to Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania. The group welcomes this discovery as a "breakthrough" and a "game changer".

"We need answers now. Time is running out, "said Stephen Mohr of Bainbridge, chairman of the Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania board of directors.

"Once CWD hit the herd of elk in Pennsylvania, it's over. They will be totally gone in 10 years or less. "

The rally prompted the Game Commission and the State Department of Agriculture to quickly replicate the prion theory.

Both agencies said they wanted to "point out that decades of research has provided ample evidence that prions, or misfolded proteins, are the infectious agent of MDC."

The Gaming Commission is well aware of Bastian's research, says Courtney Colley, communications specialist for the agency's chronic wasting.

"One of the first things to point out is that the Gaming Commission would be pleased with any successful effort by a researcher to provide MDC testing," she said. If he could develop a vaccine, we would like it a lot, because it would give us something to work with. "

But, she continued, "one of the aspects of Dr. Bastian's research is that no one has been able to reproduce it. No wildlife agency accepts the theory of bacteria.

"As the national wildlife agency that manages wildlife in Pennsylvania, it would be irresponsible of us not to follow the most widely accepted scientific research that prions are the cause of the disease causing the disease." chronic wasting. "

Bastian's research in 2017, in which he reported his ability to isolate the bacterium from deer infected with chronic wasting disease, was published in the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology.

His findings convinced Dr. Laura Manuelidis, Professor of Neuropathology at Yale Medical School.

This is what prompted the Deer and Deer Hunting magazine to publish: "Given the limited knowledge we have about this dreaded disease and the fact that national agencies for wildlife protection have been unable to To prevent it from spreading, it is high time that all scientists examine CWD and follow the path that science had planned. "

If the truth persists, hopefully the scientific process will prevail before it is too late for the venerable deer and the elk of Pennsylvania.