Scientists find mutation that protects against ‘mad cow’ disease after studying cannibal group
Scientists have found a genetic mutation that imparts complete protection against the human form of “mad cow” disease, which could lead to new ways of tackling similar incurable brain diseases.
The researchers discovered the mutation after studying the genes of the Fore people of Papua New Guinea who until recently had practised a form of cannibalism where a related disease was transmitted by eating the brain tissue of the dead.
[…]
At the height of the kuru epidemic in the mid-20th Century, the disease was killing about 2 per cent of the Fore population every year. Some villages had become so severely depopulated they risked dying out, with few if any women of child-bearing age left alive.
However, the scientists believe that people who had been born with the resistance mutation may have helped to re-populate the Fore villages, leading to a rise in the number of individuals who were resistant to kuru.
If I had more brains my first thought on reading this article in the Independent would have been, as it was for Professor John Collinge, director of the Prion Unit:
“This is a striking example of Darwinian evolution in humans – the epidemic of prion disease selecting a single genetic change that provided complete protection against an invariably fatal dementia.”
But if I had more brains I wouldn’t need a second thought.
Plenty of food for thought in this article!
If you had more brains, the Fore people might have prioritised you as dinner.
So far, they have made some mice immune to Mad Cow Disease. This apparently pointless step is actually very encouraging. I like the way that they describe cannibals eating relatives’ brains as ‘a mark of respect‘, rather than a pragmatic and apparently practical response to a shortage of protein/waste disposal problem, which would be judgemental.
Brains taste good, actually. Sheep brains, at least, but i suppose that all mammalian brains taste the same. I had a few when i was an undergraduate. They provided fats for my own brain, and dissecting them made neuroanatomy a bit easier to learn. Hopefully, this research will make it possible forme to eat brains again without worries. Meanwhile, i am getting the necessary fats from olive oil, nuts, avocado, and fish.
Snorri, don’t be misled by the brand name of this, perhaps rather un-PC product from Mr Brain’s, made from pork and liver. I distinctly recall seeing sheep brains for sale in Safeway supermarkets in the late 1970s in London. I never was tempted, it seemed then a bit like scrapie-ing the barrel.
As long as the mutation gives people enough time to create children and bring them up, it does not matter (from an evolutionary point of view) if people then die of the brain sickness.
Indeed if the disease took (say) 40 years to develop, there would be little evolutionary pressure to develop immunity to it.
Only if a disease reduces survival chances in the reproductive period (or pre reproductive period) of our lives is their evolutionary pressure against it.
The Black Death still protects many Europeans from HIV-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpXJNpymNts
Gosh, what an astounding “new” discovery.
Let’s have a chat about the Black Plague, Typhoid Mary, or maybe even milk maids in England.
Maybe even dark speckled mutations of birds, in reference to their snow white cousins, in sooty old London!
WHO PAID FOR THIS?
Must. publish. something.
Is there some secret fill-in-the-blank Mad Libs form, sold by “Paper Mills”, of pre-peer reviewed “research”, like the ones oft used by lower tier Social Justice Warriors in the “Communications/Humanities” field?
Apropos of not very much, this might be a good time to mention that I am still banned from giving blood in the USA, because they’re afraid that I might give everybody mad cow.
Dagnabit, I just finished breakfast, but reading the post & comments got me all hungry again.
CaptDMO, what are you talking about? They’ve isolated the gene and used it to make mice immune to the disease. They’re not messing around.
CaptDMO, it sounds like genuinely interesting and useful research to me. The only reason I wanted to mention zombies was, well, you can’t let an opportunity like that go by. Why do I call it useful? Firstly, anything that moves the world one day nearer to dealing with dementia is good. Secondly it is a nice, clear demonstration of Darwinian evolution, like the man said. I’m far from sharing the general lefty desire to humiliate those of my Christian brethren who hold to a literal belief in the book of Genesis, but when a thing is true it’s nice to have clear demonstrations of its truth accessible to the layman. Thirdly it knocks the last nail into the coffin of a strain of thought still sometimes met with in Guardian comments pages, namely that all descriptions of primitive people as any less noble than the Na’vi in the film Avatar are racist, colonialist fabrications. Someone put out a book a few years back saying that all descriptions ever of societies practising cannibalism were lies. Physical evidence of a brain disease that one only gets by eating human brains puts the lid on that claim. (However being dead won’t stop it from repeatedly popping up again like a zombie.) Fourthly, it’s a great bit of phlebotinum for zombie movies. Finally, it may not make a lot of difference to our lives now, but science usually does proceed by small steps. Much research merely confirms other research, or suggests ways in which it may be lacking. The modern tendency to draw dramatic conclusions on insufficient evidence is part of what got climate science into the mess it is in.
One of the cruelest genetic disorders of that will often not affect reproductive success and is dominant, so a grave peril to offspring, is Huntington’s disease, which typically appears in the mid-30s onwards, just too late for carriers to be selected out of the gene pool, barring modern test methods.
Imagine seeing a spouse die slowly of it in early middle age knowing that it may have been passed to your children.
FWIW, the title of this makes me cringe. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” while a common saying is plainly not true in general. It goes along with “The only thing you regret on your deathbed are the chances/risks you didn’t take” which, while it may be strictly true in some cases, as to what people think, is not a good philosophy to live by.
I know a guy who, in his late teens decided to do a dive into a pool of water where he couldn’t see the bottom. The bottom wasn’t deep enough, he broke his neck and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. I have another friend who acquired juvenile diabetes when she was a kid.
It didn’t kill him but it didn’t make him stronger. It didn’t kill her (thanks to the wonders of modern medicine) but it sure didn’t make her stronger. I am pretty sure that my pool diving friend will indeed regret that risk he took more than pretty much everything else on his deathbed.
Fraser Orr, applied Nietzschean morality didn’t actually do the Fore much good either. There’s a sense in which it is true psychologically, though.
Natalie at 2:51 above: Excellent comment, thanks.
Paul: Exactly.
Testimonial: We in the Colonies used to enjoy brains, calf brains usually. I’ve never fixed them (not in the stores anymore 🙁 ), but Mother used to fix them fairly often and made them for me as a special treat when I came home on college breaks. Basically take off the surrounding membrane, parboil, drain, dredge in flour, pan-fry in butter, eat. Some serve with a bit of lemon to squeeze over if desired.
There are recipes on the Internet.
They are delectable, creamy on the inside, with a crisp but tender coating, like a well-made croquette.