An incurable malady is killing deer and elk in the Rocky Mountains, and researchers will not rule out the possibility that humans could die from eating meat from animals infected with the disease. Chronic wasting disease afflicts wild ungulates in central Colorado and southeastern Wyoming. It is a cousin of mad cow disease, which has bred panic throughout Britain and made thousands of people there give up beefsteaks and burgers. People who eat beef from cattle ill with mad cow disease can develop Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which is invariably fatal. Scientists think the thousands of British cattle afflicted with mad cow disease contracted it by eating processed meal manufactured from carcasses of sheep infected with scrapie, a similar disorder.
Victims drool, stumble, become emaciated and suffer dementia before dying.
Now researchers are wondering if people can develop Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease by eating venison from Rocky Mountain deer and elk afflicted with chronic wasting disease. The disease is of concern to Californians and others since Colorado is a major destination state for hunters. Several hundred California hunters obtain Colorado big- game tags each year, hoping to bag one of the hundreds of thousands of mule deer and elk that romp through the state's wildlands. Spongiform encephalopathies are usually passed from one animal to another, but there is also evidence that they may arise spontaneously in isolated populations of animals that have never been exposed to the diseases. There is no preventive vaccine nor any cure.