Illness from Eating Human Flesh

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Kitsune
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Illness from Eating Human Flesh

Post by Kitsune »

There is an illness which humans can get from eating human flesh and there is some sort of mutation which protects a person from it.

Does anyone remember what it is called so I can look for more information?
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Patrick Ogaard
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Post by Patrick Ogaard »

There's kuru, which likely fits the bill.
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Post by Kitsune »

Patrick Ogaard wrote:There's kuru, which likely fits the bill.
That is a help, makes me know where to start looking.
"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
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Post by Patrick Ogaard »

The following looks like it's directly applicable:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... nibal.html
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Post by mr friendly guy »

Patrick beat me to it. I was going to say Kuru as well. Its basically a prion disease. Other prion disease include CJD (human version of mad cow's disease).

Basically the infectious agent is not so much a bacteria or virus, but a protein which has the same components as the "normal" protein, but structurally different. This structure when it comes into contact with the normal variant causes the normal protein to change into the abnormal structure.
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Post by Mayabird »

It is indeed kuru you were thinking of, and in one of my classes this specifically came up. It's also touched on in the National Geographic article, but I can explain it better.

The un-mutated codon in this gene that does not protect against prions is M, coding for methionine. People homozygous for this, M/M, are susceptible to kuru, as well as CJD and other prion diseases. The mutation M129V which makes people resistant to the prions means that at that codon, a nucleotide changed somewhere, changing the coding from methionine to valine. Someone heterozygous for M/V is resistant. (Interestingly, it was mentioned in my class as well that while V/V homozygotes aren't as susceptible as M/M, they're still less protected than M/V heterozygotes.)

I hope that wasn't too simplistic or confusing, or both.
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Post by andrewgpaul »

Isn't there recent research casting doubt on the prion theory of CJD and its ilk? Or is that recent research bogus?
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