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Upon reading the comments on this post, I realised that many people are terrified of prions, as am I. But why much more than a virus or bacteria? I am terrifie

Upon reading the comments on this post, I realised that many people are terrified of prions, as am I. But why much more than a virus or bacteria? I am terrified of rabies, sure, but not in the same way. Something about prions rubs me in the weirdest of ways. Maybe it has to do with them not being an "external" assailant (even if originally acquired externally), but an inherent defect of some part of myself?

donatj 5y ago
For me it’s the near total lack of hope for a cure. Your body, your proteins, slowly becoming its own undoing.
- arghwhat 5y ago
  While entirely incurable today (like many other diseases), I suspect that reality is not nearly as terrifying as the story that as painted. A virus is after all your own cells used against you, so its modus operandi of having your body fail yiu is not really that unique. Articles make it sound like our entire being unwinds in their presence, while the real outcome is likely much less exciting: clumps slowly forming that fail to get cleared and end up causing problems as they accumulate. Fatal and no available cure once there are symptoms, but... Less scary. (Disclaimer: I, like everyone else in this thread, is not a qualified source of medical information.)
  - SamBam 5y ago
    I agree that it seems at least plausible that a cure will be found in the future. The cell already has a number of quality control mechanisms for detecting misfolded proteins. It seems not unusual that we'd be able to piggyback onto this system do develop something that can detect specific prions and neutralize or destroy them, possibly delivered an an RNA shot. The problem is that there are a minuscule number of prion deaths in the developed world, so I don't see it getting a huge amount of attention. On the other hand, the Covid RNA vaccines were basically invented by a handful of people looking at a string of nucleotides over the course of five days. (It took large companies to actually develop the vaccine itself, of course.) This could end up being something that's solved by more accurate protein-folding simulations (perhaps Google's AlphaFold) and a couple of grad students.
- immibis 5y ago
  This is also how viruses work.
  - Auracle 5y ago
    Our bodies at least have a chance of defending themselves against almost all viruses. Prions? No chance. It’s a death sentence with a slow and terrible decline.
XorNot 5y ago
It's the distance between cause and effect. What were you doing 5 years ago today? In 2 years, maybe you develop a 100% fatal disease and die because of it - and there's no way to verify until you actually do or do not die of it, so you don't know it's coming. The only reliable prion disease diagnostic is brain tissue biopsy.
VHRanger 5y ago
You have antibodies against virus or bacteria. Even Ebola with a microscopic amount of contact and immediate treatment you can recover. Prions, not so much. Death sentence.
darkerside 5y ago
I think it's just that the usual protections do nothing against them. Boiling, freezing, disinfecting do nothing. There is no cure, no treatment, just a slow and inevitable decline. I think my own fear of rabies is actually somewhat similar, but yours may be different.
- karussell 5y ago
  There is no cure, yes. But I just learned from Wikipedia that the Fore (the people from Papua New Guinea) developed a gene mutation, so that the Kuru disease does not break out. And it even protects against all other TSEs!
mherdeg 5y ago
This reddit post about rabies shows some of the lurking horror of the "something bad happened, and now it's much too late to avoid the consequences" scenario: https://np.reddit.com/r/aww/comments/81rr6f/he_fed_the_cute_trash_panda_and_looked_up_for_a/dv4xyks/ https://np.reddit.com/r/aww/comments/81rr6f/he_fed_the_cute_...
fsloth 5y ago
I agree it's scary, but at the same time I realize fearing it is completely irrational for me. I would assume in a first world country you are much more likely to die of, say, slipping in a shower than of a prion disease.
marcodiego 5y ago
If I'm bitten by an animal which I suspect is rabid, I can simply take some doses of anti-rabic serum and be done with it. Actually I've done that more than once. If I suspect I've had contact with a meat or blood of a prion-infected animal, what could I do about it?
wruza 5y ago
For me it’s because they have a component of “natural destructor” mixed with “indestructible evil”. A virus, a bacteria, an amoeba feel like mosquitoes, even if deadly ones. Poisons and radiation feel like dangerous substances. They are all external and countable. Prions are your own bad design, a trivial key to a malfunction at the very core level, like an instant crystallization catalyst for your tissues, which you cannot undo. It’s not even your death that is terrific about prions, but the fact of the whole possibility of their existence - they feel just alien/enemy to our entire nature. I have similar feelings about SCP-009 (red water) and false vacuum.

donatj 5y ago

For me it’s the near total lack of hope for a cure. Your body, your proteins, slowly becoming its own undoing.

arghwhat 5y ago
While entirely incurable today (like many other diseases), I suspect that reality is not nearly as terrifying as the story that as painted. A virus is after all your own cells used against you, so its modus operandi of having your body fail yiu is not really that unique. Articles make it sound like our entire being unwinds in their presence, while the real outcome is likely much less exciting: clumps slowly forming that fail to get cleared and end up causing problems as they accumulate. Fatal and no available cure once there are symptoms, but... Less scary. (Disclaimer: I, like everyone else in this thread, is not a qualified source of medical information.)
- SamBam 5y ago
  I agree that it seems at least plausible that a cure will be found in the future. The cell already has a number of quality control mechanisms for detecting misfolded proteins. It seems not unusual that we'd be able to piggyback onto this system do develop something that can detect specific prions and neutralize or destroy them, possibly delivered an an RNA shot. The problem is that there are a minuscule number of prion deaths in the developed world, so I don't see it getting a huge amount of attention. On the other hand, the Covid RNA vaccines were basically invented by a handful of people looking at a string of nucleotides over the course of five days. (It took large companies to actually develop the vaccine itself, of course.) This could end up being something that's solved by more accurate protein-folding simulations (perhaps Google's AlphaFold) and a couple of grad students.
immibis 5y ago
This is also how viruses work.
- Auracle 5y ago
  Our bodies at least have a chance of defending themselves against almost all viruses. Prions? No chance. It’s a death sentence with a slow and terrible decline.

XorNot 5y ago

It's the distance between cause and effect. What were you doing 5 years ago today? In 2 years, maybe you develop a 100% fatal disease and die because of it - and there's no way to verify until you actually do or do not die of it, so you don't know it's coming. The only reliable prion disease diagnostic is brain tissue biopsy.

VHRanger 5y ago

You have antibodies against virus or bacteria. Even Ebola with a microscopic amount of contact and immediate treatment you can recover. Prions, not so much. Death sentence.

darkerside 5y ago

I think it's just that the usual protections do nothing against them. Boiling, freezing, disinfecting do nothing. There is no cure, no treatment, just a slow and inevitable decline. I think my own fear of rabies is actually somewhat similar, but yours may be different.

karussell 5y ago
There is no cure, yes. But I just learned from Wikipedia that the Fore (the people from Papua New Guinea) developed a gene mutation, so that the Kuru disease does not break out. And it even protects against all other TSEs!

mherdeg 5y ago

This reddit post about rabies shows some of the lurking horror of the "something bad happened, and now it's much too late to avoid the consequences" scenario: https://np.reddit.com/r/aww/comments/81rr6f/he_fed_the_cute_trash_panda_and_looked_up_for_a/dv4xyks/ https://np.reddit.com/r/aww/comments/81rr6f/he_fed_the_cute_...

fsloth 5y ago

I agree it's scary, but at the same time I realize fearing it is completely irrational for me. I would assume in a first world country you are much more likely to die of, say, slipping in a shower than of a prion disease.

marcodiego 5y ago

If I'm bitten by an animal which I suspect is rabid, I can simply take some doses of anti-rabic serum and be done with it. Actually I've done that more than once. If I suspect I've had contact with a meat or blood of a prion-infected animal, what could I do about it?

wruza 5y ago

For me it’s because they have a component of “natural destructor” mixed with “indestructible evil”. A virus, a bacteria, an amoeba feel like mosquitoes, even if deadly ones. Poisons and radiation feel like dangerous substances. They are all external and countable. Prions are your own bad design, a trivial key to a malfunction at the very core level, like an instant crystallization catalyst for your tissues, which you cannot undo. It’s not even your death that is terrific about prions, but the fact of the whole possibility of their existence - they feel just alien/enemy to our entire nature. I have similar feelings about SCP-009 (red water) and false vacuum.