‘Don’t call it zombie deer disease’: scientists warn of ‘global crisis’ as infections spread across the US | Global development

in Scattershot pattern This now extends from the coast to the coast, the continental US states have been announced new hot points of chronic wasting disease (CWD).

The nervous disorder is always infectious and fatal, nervous from the cervical family that includes deer, Ayes, mousse, in upper latitudes, reindeer. There is no vaccine or treatment.

Described By scholars As a “slow -motion disaster in making”, the presence of the infection in the wild began quietly, with a few free deer in Colorado and Wuing in 1981. However, it has now reached the floral and local herds of animals in 36 US states In addition to parts of Canada, the wild and local reindeer in the Scandinavian countries, the farm deer and the AIs in South Korea.

In the media, CWD is often called “zombie deer” due to its symptoms, which include recycling, violation, confusion, and a “vacant” and lack of fear of people. Fears related to humans or other species also grow, however, the title has angered many scientists.

“He sends what we face,” says epidemic scientist Michael Ostohm. “It leaves readers with the wrong impression that this is nothing more than some of the strange fictional threats that you find in the science fiction movie plot. Animals CWD injury is no longer from the dead. CWD is a serious general health issue for wildlife. “

Five years ago, Ostohm, Director of the Center for Research and Policy of Infectious Diseases at the University of Minnesota, would have hoped to be an invitation to wake up before the Legislative Council in Minnesota, warning of “separation” of the transmission of CWD from the infected deer to humans who eat meat. At that time, some filmed it as a scar.

Today, with the unbearable CWD spread to more deer and Ayes, more people – maybe tens of thousands every year – consume infected gazelle meat, and an increasing number of scientists are frequented with Ostrolem’s concerns.

In January 2025, researchers Publish a reportWasting the chronic disease preparedness and response: drawing an uncertain future. A committee of 67 experts studying vital diseases that could move back and forth between humans and animals has concluded that the indirect to humans “will lead to a national and global crisis” with “long -term effects on food supply, economics, global trade and agriculture”, as well as the devastating effects on human health. The report concludes that the United States is not fully prepared to deal with Finfver of CWD for people, and that there is no unified international strategy to prevent the spread of CWD.

Until now, there has been no documented condition for the human contractor CWD, but as it is with cow’s insanity (or cow’s disease) and its changing strain that killed people, long custody times can hide the presence of the disease. CWD cannot be diagnosed, which is not curable, except after the death of the victim. Experts say better monitoring of identifying diseases in people and game animals is more urgent than ever. Osterholm says the Trump administration’s proposed cuts in public health financing and research, and the United States withdrawal From international institutions, such as the World Health Organization, it cannot happen in a worse time.

R.The Experts Committee says it risk the presence of the CWD Flovers event, the risks are higher in the states where searching for the big game on the table remains a tradition. In a survey of the United States population by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, He said 20 % They searched for deer or elders, and more than 60 % said they ate gazelle or elder meat.

Tens of thousands of people are likely to eat contaminated meat either because they do not think they are at risk or that they are unaware of threat. “The fishermen who share them in gazelle with their other families is a wide -ranging practice,” says Ostohm. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advise people who doubt that they have killed an animal with ministers’ inflammation for not eating it, and states advise any fishermen who take animals from the affected areas to conduct their test. Many, however, no.

The movement of meat across the country raises fears of environmental pollution. CWD does not happen due to bacteria or virus, but because of the “brons”: the abnormal pathogens that are difficult to destroy. Brionals showed the ability to stay activated in the soil for many years, affecting animals that come into contact with polluted areas where they were thrown through urination, defecation, saliva and decomposition when an animal dies. analysis Through the American geological survey, it showed that many of the bodies of the affected animals, which may be transported by many CWD, are transported through the state lines, which accelerates the scope of the wild dispersion.

In the states where thousands of deer bodies are eliminated, some of them are in the landfill, there is anxiety among epidemic scientists and local public health officials that toxic waste sites of the liberties can be created.

Each fall, Lloyd Dorsi hunting the Ayes and deer to put the meat on the table, but it is now concerned about his safety. He says: “Since CWD is now in the Ayes and deer throughout the Great Yellowston, the disease is in the mind of everyone,” he says. Dorsi spent decades as a professional preservation of Sierra Club, based in Jackson Hall in Wyoming, and he pressed government and federal governments to close the nutrition for deer – where the uterus collects and the disease can spread easily.

He says, “Wyoming has deliberately chose to ignore the conservative specialists, scientists, pathologists and prominent wildlife managers who were all saying the same: stop nutrition.”

Regardless of dangerous concerns about reaching people, scientists describe as an “existential threat” to the wild Russians, which are essential to American fishing traditions. There is nothing more at the place than the area surrounding the most famous natural province in the country, Yellowston.

New study Follow 1000 adult white tail deer Forgery in the southwest of Wisconsin reflects what research suggested elsewhere: Over time, animals with normal reproduction are dying, which means that some population may disappear. No CWD immune animals have appeared and there is no vaccine.

If the herds become necessary to reduce the presence of the disease, they may have devastating consequences for people who depend on those animals and have a connection with them.

Studies show The presence of healthy wild meat on the landscape can help get rid of the sick people carrying CWD, but the countries in the northern Rocky have adopted policies aimed at significantly reduced Wolvesand Bears and Black mountains.

Other policies continue to contradict scientific advice. Wyoming has attracted national criticism for refusing to close nearly twenty feeding, as tens of thousands of people and deer gather within the limits of nearly winter and are fed artificial feed to support their numbers.

The federal government runs one of the largest nutrition National Ayes’ shelterWhere more than 8000 groups of Ayes, and CWD have already been discovered. Tom Rovy, former animal health president in the service of American fish and wildlife, who runs asylum, and Bruce Smith, a former biologist in the shelter, said that Wyoming has created mature conditions for the outbreak of the disease, with consequences that would negatively destroy all over the region.

“This was a slowly expanded epidemic with a decades -playing growth curve, but now we see the consequences of deepening and may be severe,” says Rove. “Unfortunately, what happened with this disease was predicted and we live with the consequences of some decisions that were rooted in denial.”

Rove and others say that the best defense is the presence of healthy landscapes where the abnormal nutrition of wildlife is unnecessary and where predators are not eliminated, but allowed to implement their role in getting rid of sick animals.

“Since Yellowston has been for generations, he is the best and best place to properly preserve wildlife,” Dorsi says. “It would be a shame like us if we continue to do something as a fool like the concentration of thousands of people and deer, which makes them more likely to arrest and spread this catastrophic disease, when we did not.”

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