🚀 go-pugleaf

Miche wrote:

> The human disease referred to here is called kuru, and is contracted
> by eating the brain of an infected person.

	This was the theory I was taught many years ago, and it may 
indeed be true. It's certainly found in many current medical texts.

	However, I should point out that back in the second year of 
medical school (BUSM), they told us that epidemiological studies
showed that while the brains were eaten exclusively by men (it was 
part of a funereal ritual, not a dietary supplement), most of the
disease cases occurred in women. It was believed that the prion was
spread through abrasions or open wounds during 'preparation' of the
brain for eating, rather than through eating the (cooked) brain. 

	I can't recall having heard this from any other source, but
I gotta trust my alma mater.  It certainly opens the prospect that
prions spread by contact with non-intact skin. (Fuel for discussion?)

					- Soumen Nandy
					  snandy@nandy.com