A deadly neurological infection, chronic wasting disease, has been detected in deer, elk and moose in 30 states and four Canadian provinces. Human risk is low, but hunters need to take precautions.
Scientists can make mistakes, but it’s important to keep an open mind and curious approach when conducting research.
(Shutterstock)
Mistakes can be made during scientific research with devastating effects. Keeping an open mind to the possibility of error and correcting immediately can make the difference between life and death.
A reporter interviews a protester outside the Amarillo courthouse.
AP Photo/Eric Gay
Twenty years ago, a Texas court decided Winfrey hadn’t defamed the state’s cattle industry. At the time, local media struggled to explain the science at stake in the case.
Prion diseases are a rare class of brain disorders that are transmissible between animals of any species, including humans.
djneight/Flickr
Colin Masters, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
New research has identified a known neurodegenerative disease as being caused by prions. And it has again raised the possibility that these proteins are infectious.
Creutzfeld-Jacob disease occurs in about one to two in every million people each year, most often in late middle-age.
Andrew Mason/Flickr
News that a Sydney man has contracted Creutzfeld-Jacob disease serves to highlight that we still don’t know how to prevent a disease that most often goes unreported, and unremarked on.