4 ms·

I already found prions terrifying: incurable, nigh-indestructible, and not terribly difficult to ingest without knowing it. This just kicks it up a notch.

by rflrob 16y ago

16s 16y ago
Nothing to be concerned about. How many people die of CJD every year? Not many. You should be afraid of cancer, car wrecks and heart disease, they kill more people in one week than CJD does in a decade.
- wglb 16y ago
  The thing about it that is frightening is that the length of time that it can take to manifest itself can be a very long time. Thus, it could be that already there are many many latent, slowly developing cases of nvCJD in our population.
  - jared314 16y ago
    Research into slow diseases always seem to get funding slowly.
    - wglb 16y ago
      Perhaps it is the airplane crash theory of giving impetus to research. Nobody, en masse, has yet died, so what is the problem.
      - Groxx 16y ago
        Well, there was that initial surge of public interest when the cause and breadth of mad cow disease was first publicized. I doubt many people think of it much any more, though. I think bird flu did it in.
- rflrob 16y ago
  You're absolutely right, and the time I spend worrying about any of these things is relatively low either way. As a moderately fit young adult with a good family medical history, only car wrecks are something that are reasonably likely to strike me in the next 10-20 years. That doesn't change the fact that, considering each on it's own, prions are scarier to me than the others. You're more likely to get kicked by a deer than eaten by a shark, but sharks are still scarier animals.
  - Groxx 16y ago
    >You're more likely to get kicked by a deer than eaten by a shark, but sharks are still scarier animals. That's a nice phrasing... especially accurate for people (like me) who live in / near deer'd areas and nowhere near shark-country. I'll have to remember it for later use :)
InclinedPlane 16y ago
A nearby supernova or more distant hypernova could bathe the entire Earth in lethal levels of neutrino radiation. There would be no way to shield yourself from it (they can penetrate through the entire Earth easily) and no way to prevent the death of all human beings alive. But it's unlikely. Better to concentrate on risks which are more relevant and more likely. Do you find driving or riding in an automobile terrifying? Eating a cheese burger? You're far more likely to die of heart disease or an automotive accident than prions or neutrino radiation.
- billswift 16y ago
  >lethal levels of neutrino radiation I doubt that is even physically possible. Neutrinos are nearly impossible to detect because they don't interact with normal matter. In fact, I'm not sure they interact with much of anything. Does anybody know if they do interact with any other elementary particles? Your point about concentrating on more likely risks is a good one though.
  - InclinedPlane 16y ago
    Yes, neutrinos are incredibly weakly interacting. However, Type II supernovae dump the vast majority (99%) of their energy into neutrino radiation. Moreover, the extremely high energies of supernova neutrinos (MeV range) increases their interaction cross-section as well as the damage they can do when they do interact. If a supernova (or hypernova) were to occur close enough to Earth it could cause a mass extinction due to neutrino radiation alone. Consider, supernova 1987A radiated so many neutrinos that it increased the neutrino flux at Earth by 10,000x compared to the Solar flux. That event happened in a neighboring galaxy 168,000 light-years away, an event a mere 20 light-years away would result in a neutrino flux 70 million times greater than that (700 billion times normal background levels). A hypernova would release over 100 times as much energy. Indeed, some researchers believe that some mass extinctions in Earth's past might be due to such events: http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9505028 http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9505028 Fortunately for us stars that would be both large enough to go supernova and close enough to present such a threat should be quite bright and thus very unlikely to have escaped our notice (hypernovae candidates as well, if we're lucky).

I already found prions terrifying: incurable, nigh-indestructible, and not terribly difficult to ingest without knowing it. This just kicks it up a notch.

by rflrob 16y ago

I already found prions terrifying: incurable, nigh-indestructible, and not terribly difficult to ingest without knowing it. This just kicks it up a notch.

16s 16y ago

Nothing to be concerned about. How many people die of CJD every year? Not many. You should be afraid of cancer, car wrecks and heart disease, they kill more people in one week than CJD does in a decade.

wglb 16y ago
The thing about it that is frightening is that the length of time that it can take to manifest itself can be a very long time. Thus, it could be that already there are many many latent, slowly developing cases of nvCJD in our population.
- jared314 16y ago
  Research into slow diseases always seem to get funding slowly.
  - wglb 16y ago
    Perhaps it is the airplane crash theory of giving impetus to research. Nobody, en masse, has yet died, so what is the problem.
    - Groxx 16y ago
      Well, there was that initial surge of public interest when the cause and breadth of mad cow disease was first publicized. I doubt many people think of it much any more, though. I think bird flu did it in.
rflrob 16y ago
You're absolutely right, and the time I spend worrying about any of these things is relatively low either way. As a moderately fit young adult with a good family medical history, only car wrecks are something that are reasonably likely to strike me in the next 10-20 years. That doesn't change the fact that, considering each on it's own, prions are scarier to me than the others. You're more likely to get kicked by a deer than eaten by a shark, but sharks are still scarier animals.
- Groxx 16y ago
  >You're more likely to get kicked by a deer than eaten by a shark, but sharks are still scarier animals. That's a nice phrasing... especially accurate for people (like me) who live in / near deer'd areas and nowhere near shark-country. I'll have to remember it for later use :)

InclinedPlane 16y ago

A nearby supernova or more distant hypernova could bathe the entire Earth in lethal levels of neutrino radiation. There would be no way to shield yourself from it (they can penetrate through the entire Earth easily) and no way to prevent the death of all human beings alive. But it's unlikely. Better to concentrate on risks which are more relevant and more likely. Do you find driving or riding in an automobile terrifying? Eating a cheese burger? You're far more likely to die of heart disease or an automotive accident than prions or neutrino radiation.

billswift 16y ago
>lethal levels of neutrino radiation I doubt that is even physically possible. Neutrinos are nearly impossible to detect because they don't interact with normal matter. In fact, I'm not sure they interact with much of anything. Does anybody know if they do interact with any other elementary particles? Your point about concentrating on more likely risks is a good one though.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Yes, neutrinos are incredibly weakly interacting. However, Type II supernovae dump the vast majority (99%) of their energy into neutrino radiation. Moreover, the extremely high energies of supernova neutrinos (MeV range) increases their interaction cross-section as well as the damage they can do when they do interact. If a supernova (or hypernova) were to occur close enough to Earth it could cause a mass extinction due to neutrino radiation alone. Consider, supernova 1987A radiated so many neutrinos that it increased the neutrino flux at Earth by 10,000x compared to the Solar flux. That event happened in a neighboring galaxy 168,000 light-years away, an event a mere 20 light-years away would result in a neutrino flux 70 million times greater than that (700 billion times normal background levels). A hypernova would release over 100 times as much energy. Indeed, some researchers believe that some mass extinctions in Earth's past might be due to such events: http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9505028 http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9505028 Fortunately for us stars that would be both large enough to go supernova and close enough to present such a threat should be quite bright and thus very unlikely to have escaped our notice (hypernovae candidates as well, if we're lucky).