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

[Charlie Stross]

On 28 Nov 2003, at 16:10, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:

>
> On Fri, 28 Nov 2003, Charlie Stross wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
> Charlie, are you sure about this?  I've never encountered anything
> that suggested there was mother-to-fetus transmission.  It would
> be very hard to separate out -- if a mother was normally consuming
> infected individuals there would probably be ample opportunity for
> a child, teenager or young adult to consume infected individuals
> as well.

I'm talking classic CJD in the environment in which it was first 
detected. (I doubt central European orthodox Jews were hot on 
cannibalism in the late 19th -- or was it early 20th -- century?) 
Caveat: I'm working from memory and don't have sources to hand. But as 
I recall CJD was thought to be just an early-onset form of senile 
dementia that ran in families, rather than a different type of disease.


--  Charlie