this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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Mad cow disease is caused by prions from dead cow brains infecting the healthy brains of living cows. It's kind of the cow equivalent of Kuru.
I thought it wasn't just any prions, but specific prions that replicate out of control after some time, depending on genetics. So cows were fed unclean bone meal from sheep and pigs and cows all mixed together, and they think some scrapie infected sheep spine/brain got in there and it spread to cows. Then it spread from there because we didn't think cows could get it and even if they could we were pretty certain humans couldn't get it. But we were wrong.
There is a natural incidence of prions in cows of one in a million, but we have herds this big now.
There's natural incidence of prion disease in humans as well. I'm definitely not an expert and just remembering a video I watched a week or two ago. That the prions from different sources act differently.
Video I watched: Mad cow disease Also watched this one