CWD spread by saliva, says study

[379 Peterbilt]

Those of you still baiting for deer - Enjoy it today, tomorrow there may be a law against it LOL

From the Wisconsin rapids tribune....

Other view: CWD study mandates feeding and baiting ban


No state has studied chronic wasting disease -- how to control it, how to prevent it, how to treat it -- as much as Colorado.


And still researchers there were baffled by one essential question: How is the fatal disease spread?


Scientists announced last week that they think they've answered that question. CWD is transmitted from one deer to another in saliva.


That's important news in Wisconsin, where CWD has ravaged a herd near Mount Horeb and could wipe out a $1 billion-a-year industry.


And it won't be welcomed by some hunters.


First the facts: CWD is akin to mad cow disease and a human equivalent called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. It's caused by infectious proteins called prions and, unlike mad cow, it has proven easily transmittable from animal to animal.


There are no documented cases of CWD being passed from a deer or elk to a human.


That hasn't stopped people from panicking about the presence of CWD in Wisconsin and other states. After it first was documented here in 2002, the deer harvest during Wisconsin's nine-day rifle season dropped about 20 percent below 10-year averages.


Hunters simply stayed home.


Numbers have rebounded since then, as the outbreak has been contained to an area west of Madison, but research has continued.


The problem Colorado scientists had was that studying animals as large and wide-ranging as deer and elk is nearly impossible. Just capturing a wild deer can cause enough stress to kill the animal.


And exposing deer or elk to CWD creates a ticking time bomb. The animals can't be allowed back in the wild or even permitted to contact other deer through fences because they can spread the disease. They must be kept indoors, which causes even more stress.


So Colorado State University researcher Edward Hoover -- get ready to be sad -- tried a different approach. He took fawns that had been hand-raised indoors in Georgia, where there is no CWD, and intentionally exposed them.


He took saliva from CWD-positive deer in Colorado and squirted it into the mouths of the fawns. He also used a control group that was exposed to the blood, urine and feces of infected deer.


The fawns exposed to saliva and blood all got sick. Those exposed to urine and feces didn't.


That doesn't mean urine and feces can't spread CWD. But it's conclusive evidence that saliva does -- and not just directly transmitted saliva.


And that's bad news, according to Richard Johnson, a Johns Hopkins University professor who specializes in prion science.


"You can move deer out of a pasture, put other deer into the pasture, and they'll come down with the disease. It's not even casual contact, it's contact with the pasture," Johnson said. "It must be something in their secretions."


That evidence bolsters an argument scientists already have made -- and that Wisconsin lawmakers and many hunters and residents have ignored: Feeding and baiting deer should be prohibited.


There's no way to prevent deer from bumping noses in their natural environment. In corn fields and at other food supplies, they occasionally will come into contact with one another.


But feeding and baiting -- dumping mounds of shelled corn or other food on the ground -- makes it inevitable.


It doesn't matter if it's five gallons or 500 pounds of corn. When deer congregate and compete for food, they pass saliva. And even if they don't bump noses, one sick deer can contaminate a food pile and make every other animal that visits sick.


Science finally has spoken with authority on the subject.


Lawmakers must listen, even if hunters and residents won't.


-- Wausau Daily Herald



http://www.wisconsinrapidstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061010/WRT06/610100357/1861

[EsoxLucius]

Scientists announced last week that they think they've answered that question.

"Think" is the operative word there.  Mainstream science for years has failed to adequately address environmental factors in CWD genesis or dissemination.

[Buckskin]

Not really earth shattering.  They knew it spread easily and saliva would be my first guess as to the vehicle of transmission.  What they really need to find out is how it can stay in the environment for years w/out any infected animals present.  That is the real danger to our heard.