US: nasty "zombie deer disease" surging in animals, can spread to humans

[Retro]

There's always some horrible disease on the rise threatening everything, as if the world doesn't have enough problems already. This one doesn't seem so different to rabies and we know how bad that is. Mankind should throw everything they've got at this to develop a vaccine and other measures to keep this thing at bay. I feel for any animal or person who catches this.

“Zombie deer disease” could spread to humans, scientists have warned as cases surge across the United States.

Chronic wasting disease (CWD), which causes infected animals to become listless and jittery, often drooling and grinding their teeth with a zombie-like blank stare, has spread to 32 US states and four Canadian provinces, according to the United States Geological Survey.

The deadly disease has cropped up in Kansas, Wisconsin and Nebraska, where more than 40 counties have reported cases, USA Today reports, and has also been found in 800 samples of deer, elk and moose throughout Wyoming.

“We’re dealing with a disease that is invariably fatal, incurable and highly contagious,” Dr Cory Anderson, the co-director of a CWD programme at University of Minnesota, told The Guardian.

“Baked into the worry is that we don’t have an effective, easy way to eradicate it, neither from the animals it infects nor the environment it contaminates.”

‘Zombie deer disease’ could spread to humans as cases surge across US

“Zombie deer disease” could spread to humans, scientists have warned as cases surge across the United States.

uk.news.yahoo.com