[extropy-chat] The Funeral as an "act of conspicuous consumption"

[Charlie Stross]

On 28 Nov 2003, at 11:08, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:

>> "The question is why has cannibalism, by and large, stopped?
>
> Couldn't the explanation be as simple as the fact that most
> of the people who practiced it have died out due to prion
> diseases (such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease)?

Possibly. But there's a fly in the ointment: CJD has such a long 
incubation period -- at least in the classically known familial form -- 
that before Kuru, Scrapie and BSE were identified as prion diseases it 
appeared to be genetic. A new generation would be infected in utero, 
and they didn't exhibit symptoms until well after they reached 
reproductive age -- thus infecting their own children.

Given that diseases tend to coevolve with their hosts, if prion 
diseases were so widespread that they killed off a widespread social 
custom I would expect there to be a marked selection pressure for 
variants with a long incubation time -- and thus CJD-like familial 
diseases would be a lot commoner.

(Of course, we don't know for sure what the causative origin of, say, 
Alzheimers is -- the evidence might be right behind our noses, only not 
identified as such yet. But I suspect the increase in interest in prion 
diseases over the past decade should tell us something useful in the 
near future.)


-- Charlie (returning to the list after transition problems)