The CWD scam

[mt terry d]

I would just like to add that if you're a hunter who will have your meat tested
and throw it away if testing positive then for God's sake DON'T HUNT!
If you're too scared to eat it then have the decency to not kill it.

 

[ScreamingPotato]

You can eat all the infected shit you want, I'm not feeding positive deer to my family. I'm sure we've unknowingly eaten infected animals by now but I'm certainly not doing it on purpose. They say the average American eats two spiders per year while sleeping but I'm not gonna be popping spiders while watching a movie. Better the animal dies from a bullet or arrow than slowly wasting away anyway.

 

[Legend]

I respect everyone's opportunity to have an opinion and to have the opportunity to believe whatever they want.

I made it about 10min into that video and that dude isn't qualified to tie my shoes. Just my opinion.

Prions are some scary stuff and there is no reason to take a chance with eating cwd meat. Especially if at anytime you cut/shot/damaged the spine or brain.

 

[elkhunter505]

There’s a reason that this guy not very well respected by academics and DNR in Wisconsin particularly. On his website he has a published “white paper” aka a report or analysis that was never submitted for peer review. I don’t trust anything from academic scientists that is not peer reviewed especially when they’re pumping it on their own private consulting website. If it was good solid science, it would be peer reviewed and published in a scientific journal and there wouldn’t be people that actively question his credibility. Since his analysis, CWD has “exploded” in prevalence across Wisconsin. They basically ran this guy out of Wisconsin and on top of that many people question his credibility while he is one of the only scientists questioning everyone else’s credibility. That should immediately set off alarm bells. Guy has published nothing on CWD since 2012 while the literature surrounding CWD has truly exploded with hundreds of articles being published every year with better and better science and more and more accurate predictions. If he truly knew what he was talking about and was respected, he would be on those papers. When you go emeritus, you don’t just stop publishing immediately, you keep working with people. Wisconsin DNR and the National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin are putting out the best, highest quality CWD research consistently year after year. There’s a reason they do not work with this guy. He also never followed up on what he talked about in 2012, you can go find Pat Durkin’s summary on what was supposed to be his follow up in 2022.

 

[Bugger]

If you're too scared to eat it then have the decency to not kill it.

So it’s immoral to kill something with a torturous terminal disease?

 

[elkhunter505]

Funniest part is this same website had an opinion piece from a member that basically slandered the 2012 report and how subjective and nonscientific it was back in 2012. Shows you how much trust the public has lost in science if they're now pumping the same guy that one of their own was slandering a decade and a half ago. Science has made it a long way since this guy got his PhD in 1973 and cowboy science is a thing of the past despite how fun and nonchalant it may have been to do it.

There are also scamming allegations against him from way back on archerytalk which may not be the most credible of places, but there was multiple people corroborating the same type of behavior.

 

[IAm_Not_Lost]

If someone told me the meat I just ate was infected with CWD I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. With that said if someone forced me to test my deer and told me it was infected I probably would feel uneasy eating it.

Anyone can look up that the likelihood of contracting CWD from eating deer meat is next to zero, or actually, at this point is zero. Every peer reviewed study that I can find demonstrates that. Yet, because there is an extremely faint theoretical possibility that it could adapt to cross the brain barrier, they still recommend not eating it.

And there hasn’t ever been a known verified case of CWD being transmitted to humans from eating or handling deer meat.

So, yeah, I wouldn’t stress if I had already eaten something, nor would it bother me overly to eat meat that was infected, but, if someone told me specifically that my deer had CWD, sure, I’d probably hold off on eating simply because that’s the current recommendation.

 

[ScreamingPotato]

There’s a reason that this guy not very well respected by academics and DNR in Wisconsin particularly. On his website he has a published “white paper” aka a report or analysis that was never submitted for peer review. I don’t trust anything from academic scientists that is not peer reviewed especially when they’re pumping it on their own private consulting website. If it was good solid science, it would be peer reviewed and published in a scientific journal and there wouldn’t be people that actively question his credibility. Since his analysis, CWD has “exploded” in prevalence across Wisconsin. They basically ran this guy out of Wisconsin and on top of that many people question his credibility while he is one of the only scientists questioning everyone else’s credibility. That should immediately set off alarm bells. Guy has published nothing on CWD since 2012 while the literature surrounding CWD has truly exploded with hundreds of articles being published every year with better and better science and more and more accurate predictions. If he truly knew what he was talking about and was respected, he would be on those papers. When you go emeritus, you don’t just stop publishing immediately, you keep working with people. Wisconsin DNR and the National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin are putting out the best, highest quality CWD research consistently year after year. There’s a reason they do not work with this guy. He also never followed up on what he talked about in 2012, you can go find Pat Durkin’s summary on what was supposed to be his follow up in 2022.

Funniest part is this same website had an opinion piece from a member that basically slandered the 2012 report and how subjective and nonscientific it was back in 2012. Shows you how much trust the public has lost in science if they're now pumping the same guy that one of their own was slandering a decade and a half ago. Science has made it a long way since this guy got his PhD in 1973 and cowboy science is a thing of the past despite how fun and nonchalant it may have been to do it.

There are also scamming allegations against him from way back on archerytalk which may not be the most credible of places, but there was multiple people corroborating the same type of behavior.

Appreciate the additional background and info you provided, pretty eye opening. Sounds like this dude may be a paid lobbyist for a special interest nowadays.

 

[elkhunter505]

And there hasn’t ever been a known verified case of CWD being transmitted to humans from eating or handling deer meat.

So, yeah, I wouldn’t stress if I had already eaten something, nor would it bother me overly to eat meat that was infected, but, if someone told me specifically that my deer had CWD, sure, I’d probably hold off on eating simply because that’s the current recommendation.

Exactly, this is how it should be. We don't need to give CWD a reason or a chance to jump the species barrier to humans. I understand that it sucks when a deer test positive for CWD after you spend time and effort to kill it, but it could be end up being contagious in humans if it jumps the barrier. Luckily mad cow has not been transmissible, but that doesn't mean that other diseases can't become transmissible.

 

[elkhunter505]

Appreciate the additional background and info you provided, pretty eye opening. Sounds like this dude may be a paid lobbyist for a special interest nowadays.

Totally possible given that he works with deer farmers consistently still. In one of his reports he talks about how the positivity rate is so low and what not, but what he fails to think about before writing this is his own numbers surrounding CWD in wild vs captive populations indicate that prevalence is 8x higher in captive populations than in wild populations. While those are concerning, it is the lack of published peer-reviewed research coming from him after 2012 that really has me skeeved out. I know a lot of Emeritus professors and a large proportion of them continue working with others following retirement just at a lower rate. You can't get away with bad science in peer reviewed papers, you can in the private/public setting where you have a following of hunters that believes everything that you say regardless of the science behind it.

 

[PWCGray]

My knowledge on the topic—and of "Dr. Deer"—is limited, but I will say much of what he says about the changes in the culture of state game management folks is 100% true. He also has a point about wanting to see some statistically significant proof that X or Y has worked as a strategy. Seems logical.

People love to say "peer-reviewed" science when it comes to wildlife research. I find it hilarious, because there’s a ton of heavily cited, peer-reviewed science in the wildlife world that has zero statistically significant results. Yet, news outlets talk about it all the time. It was rampant during the whole wolf deal in Colorado. Wolves solving cwd, saving millions of dollars by reducing car wrecks with deer, etc...

I went through a period in my life where I’d hear a biologist, political talking head, or article/media outlet say something, and then I’d go track down the actual paper. Pull up the statistics. In the vast majority of cases, it was a NOTHING BURGER statistically. A lot of the stuff you’ll run into doesn’t even have data—seriously, there is no data. The conclusions are based on models alone.

One time, I spent probably 30 hours of my life analyzing a model that was used by the National Park Service to draw some giant conclusions about goat/sheep competition. Those conclusions resulted in a bunch of goats being killed and other management decisions. I’ve spent an enormous amount of time hunting goats and bighorns... the assumptions in that model were so off base it made me cringe.

CWD may be the worst thing on earth, and this guy might be 100% wrong on that front—but he’s right about questioning things.

 

[elkhunter505]

CWD may be the worst thing on earth, and this guy might be 100% wrong on that front—but he’s right about questioning things.

That's the entire point of science. We do that consistently and news outlets that want to use nonsignificant results as a basis for something are doing so at their own hazard but in the real world, significance is extremely hard to find. The statistical significance paradigm of alpha = 0.05 is an outdated paradigm that does not allow for uncertainty nor any wiggle room for decision makers to allow for risk averse or risk tolerant management scenarios. Everyone wants to say that 0.051 is not statistically significant but 0.049 is and all that comes down to is a tiny tiny difference where an 95% CI for an effect overlaps 0 by even the slightest amount. Depending on the result, a nonsignificant result can be completely uninformative lets say a 95% CI that goes from -1 to 1 with a mean of 0 which would basically be a p-value of close to 1, or it could likely be informative like a 95% CI that goes from -0.02 to 2.22 which could be a statistically "insignificant" p-value of 0.052. Statistical significance is a paradigm that should only be applied to controlled lab experiments. Wildlife managers are working in the real world and that means we need to be able to use information that is not necessarily statistically significant because sometimes it is too hard to control for outside influences and get the perfect measurement of something. There is a big push toward Bayesian statistics in the wildlife management world because it allows us to not have to rely on these types of "significance".

I am more than happy to explain some of these things if others would like to hear about them further. Likely this explanation I gave is more convoluted than helpful, so I could rewrite it or give an example if it is warranted.

 

[Chad E]

I would just like to add that if you're a hunter who will have your meat tested
and throw it away if testing positive then for God's sake DON'T HUNT!
If you're too scared to eat it then have the decency to not kill it.

I'd just like to add that your bravado and tough guy attitude is completely out of place and irrelevant in this conversation. Your source is suspect at best...

I killed a buck in 23 in Colorado that ended up testing positive for cwd. I have young children at home that have eaten 100x more wild game in their lives than beef. It was a painful decision but I chose to dispose of the meat through the proper channels. I can assure you the hole in the freezer was not enjoyed nor taken lightly but it was the right decision for my family and one I'd make again as long as it's legal to do so. Until new sciences shows no risk I think we all have to weigh the risks based on our own personal beliefs and situations. I don't care what you choose to eat but don't tell me what I'm supposed to. I'll keep hunting as well.

 

[longspeak74]

I live in Wisconsin and hunt in one of the counties with the highest number of CWD cases.
I' ve seen firsthand what a deer with CWD looks like towards the end of its life. Shooting everytime.

 

[WannaBeRambo]

I served in the military back in the 1980’s, part of that was NATO Europe. Somewhere during that time some European douchebag businessman decided feeding cow body parts like brains to other cows was a good way to save on feed and carcass disposal.

Fast forward to I guess 1995 and go to make the blood donation that will give me the distinction of being a gallon blood donor, only to be told they don’t want my blood donation ever again. I was told those cows consumed by Europeans and others (me) who lived there during this time were somehow tied to “mad cow” disease and people like me presumably consumed this meat and our blood may be tainted. Apparently mad cow and CWD have similarities.

Now, I understand the guidelines changed in the last few years, but take a moment and imagine you’ve had this nagging worry FOR THE LAST 30 YEARS, that I’m going to get some brain rot in my senior years and instead of doing my dream hunts, I could be drooling on my pajamas down at the home unable to do anything requiring my brain, because some rich guy was not rich enough.

So go ahead and enjoy your freedom, hard OH HELL NO from me.
Yes I support any steps needed to eliminate CWD, even if they cause me inconvenience.
We need to be loud in ensuring research is funded and follow the best science available.

 

[ddd-shooter]

At some point, don’t we have to say we’ve inadvertently done the research regarding transmission to humans?
How many thousands of humans have partaken of tainted meat over the last forty or fifty years?
At what point are we searching for a problem that’s not willing to show itself?

I don’t have the answers.

 

[Billy Goat]

Europeans and others (me) who lived there during this time were somehow tied to “mad cow” disease and people like me presumably consumed this meat and our blood may be tainted. Apparently mad cow and CWD have similarities.

It's spongiform encephalopathies, similar conditions through numerous hosts, but the prions seem to be selective to species. It's mad cow disease, scrapie, CWD, some saying it's CJD in humans.



There's no evidence of prions jumping from one host to another as far as I know.

I think the link of CJD was from people eating squirrel brains in the south, but there was also some possible genetic heritage, and nothing pinned down where it actually started.


It should only be present in spinal tissues and brain matter. Eating normal animal portions shouldn't be exposing us to the prions.
That's current information.

It's know to be a hereditary condition, so it's possible to shoot a yearling that's infected but is showing no signs.

Can be scary, or it can be something that's been around hundreds of years and just never became too prevalent.
As far as I know, it's hard to determine. But it will only be found where it's getting tested for mainly, and lots of areas it's not actively tested for.

 

[Skerhunter]

I can’t wrap my head around the tse diseases and make an educated opinion on it. We obviously don’t know exactly how it works (zoonotic transmission), but the list of people who want to work hand on with prions to figure it out is probably pretty short.

For cattle we believe - don’t feed them products of animal origin, because that’s how it’s transmitted. They can’t spread it by just being in contact with infected animals. We test the cattle we eat and it is extremely rare now. You could assume there are infected cattle that aren’t tested (slaughtered), but it’s also assumed it can be passed on at birth (should eventually show up).

For deer/sheep/elk we believe it is transmitted through contact/environment/birth. But doesn’t match how we think it works in cattle.

For CJD we believe it comes from consuming contaminated meat, medical procedures or inherited.

So where exactly does it come from? If inherited solving the problem in deer/elk will be difficult without killing them off. If it’s from consuming infected animals a lot of us on here might be at risk. But we don’t know what makes it zoonotic or not.

I do know CJD is a horrible disease but not much worse than say cancer/Parkinson's/etc. I know a few ppl who have died from it (old timers in the 90s and family friend 2 years ago). All had some weird unexplained health issues and quickly deteriorated and died within ~12 months. All were right at 65-70.

 

[Conrad101st]

Anytime one of my friends send me a video from somebody “who is in the know” I always ask one question. Why does it take 45 minutes for some “expert” to transmit a point of view when the New York Times or BBC can do it 6 paragraphs or 3 minutes.

 

[rclouse79]

I personally don’t test my animals because ignorance is bliss. I also have zero issues with a hunter throwing away an animal that tests positive for CWD. Isn’t that better than government agents culling animals on the tax payers dime?