The simplest counterpoint to prion cataclysm fear is that it hasn't happened yet. That implies a low chance that it'll happen anytime in the near future.
There's no evidence that any significant human population has ever been wiped out by prions at any point in the history of the species. Heck, we haven't even observed widespread (>10% infected) prion disease in any species.
At least with something like climate change, there's the fact that post-industrial activity is doing something different than pre-industrial history. But this reasoning doesn't hold for prion cataclysm. It's more like asteroid apocalypse. Yes it could happen, but statistically it's not something we have to worry about on a civilizational timeframe.
I don't see any justification for why humanity in 2021 is courting prion disaster to a greater degree than it was in 2000 BC. Animal husbandry has existed for fifteen thousand years. Maybe globalization would spread a prion outbreak faster. But the point is we've never even observed localized prion collapse. If prions were that dangerous, there should already be regional areas that have transformed into total no-go zones.
Conversely industrialized meat production is relatively recent, and so the volume of prion's being introduced into the environment is potentially much higher then the rate at which they are degrading naturally, not to mention the degree of regional cross-mixing of sources.
Prion contamination can now be shipped around the world in about 24 hours, where it can enter new populations much more easily.
Proteins do eventually break down in the environment. If you hugely multiply the number of humans and population density, you are creating a situation where prion diseases can become endemic where they couldn't have been before.
This is probably exactly what happened with CWD - deer overpopulation plus the random protein misfold created the conditions for a contagious disease where it didn't exist before.
Or could it be that we have it and don't know it. Alzheimer cases are growing as we remove other causes of death. Dementia is just accepted as a consequence of growing old. It not like we section every brain of an old person who dies.
We only noticed it on our farm animals because we brought the cycle time down as we fed downer cows to other cows as a source of protein
> I don't see any justification for why humanity in 2021 is courting prion disaster to a greater degree than it was in 2000 BC.
While the kinds of people who would fly planes into buildings, release nerve toxins in subway stations or club entire villages of outsiders to death have always existed the ability to research and manufacture prions did not exist in 2000BC.
That combination of desire to destroy the world and the legitimate ability to do it with rapidly more accessible biotechnology is a disconcerting reality that we need to account for when discussing theses things.
Imagine a religious extremists organization mass producing prions and placing them in key parts of food supply chain. We probably wouldn't have a clue until it was too late.
Biotech as a whole and its misuse by fanatics (or public servants in states with dubious moral …) is a massive concern for the 21th century, but I don't really think prions deserve a special place in this list. There's way too much scary things in here (gene drive, artificial viruses, intentional smallpox spreading, etc.)
That may be the case but it's a different issue than "Why are prions more of a threat to humanity than they were 4k years ago?"
With that said I sort of disagree with you. Prions are particularly attractive to a hypothetical bioterrorist due to the difficulty in detecting them, their durability and also the delay on effects. As I said above, once you know you have a problem it will be too late.
Keep in mind these are just the prions that nature has produced. It is quite possible that humans are able to modify existing threatening prions or develop whole new classes of threatening prions that haven't developed in nature.
Overall I think the most effective strike from a bioterrorist won't come from a single attack vector but a well timed combination of vectors. We've seen how something as minor as COVID has taken all of our attention and resources, now imagine if a terrorist timed something like COVID with a follow up strike like prions.
> hypothetical bioterrorist due to the difficulty in detecting them, their durability and also the delay on effects.
Terrorism is about fear, and that comes with spectacular actions even if it kills relatively few people, not with stealthy poisoning of big population.
You're not gonna have anything remotely as impactful as 9/11 with prions, even if you killed a million people in the long run.
Is it a good weapon for a nation state going at war, or committing a genocide. Definitely yes! But it sucks for terrorism.
> The simplest counterpoint to prion cataclysm fear is that it hasn't happened yet.
Well a prion disease (called Kuru) did affect the Fore people of New Guinea seriously in the 1950s and 1960s as I recall. Here is what Wikipedia says about the Fore people:
> Furthermore, Kuru predominantly affected women, as women more commonly partook in cannibalistic religious rituals. Because of this, there was a significant sex imbalance in Fore society.[14] By some accounts, this gender imbalance reached a 3:1 male to female ratio at its worst. This affected the family structure of the Fore, as it became commonplace for children to be raised and cared for only by their fathers.[1]
I do have the book, it's quite interesting, but I read about Kuru while it was still thought to be caused by an infectious virus. My recollection is a bit vague, but I believe it was in Time or Newsweek during the 1960s.
It was a scary sounding disease so I remembered it when years later it was discovered to be caused by prions and reported in The New York Times.
This is the right way to think about it. That said, a 1% infection rate that isn't at all a threat to the species given normal biological processes* will cause us to completely flip our shit. While we wouldn't be wiped out, everybody would be real upset for a long while. Look at COVID.
*Technology has given us things like nukes, so...could be harder to predict these days.
I'm not afraid of being hit by some asteroid hanging there, but if one day we spotted an asteroid whose trajectory was straight to earth, then being terrified would be quite legitimate.
There's no evidence that any significant human population has ever been wiped out by prions at any point in the history of the species. Heck, we haven't even observed widespread (>10% infected) prion disease in any species.
At least with something like climate change, there's the fact that post-industrial activity is doing something different than pre-industrial history. But this reasoning doesn't hold for prion cataclysm. It's more like asteroid apocalypse. Yes it could happen, but statistically it's not something we have to worry about on a civilizational timeframe.
I don't see any justification for why humanity in 2021 is courting prion disaster to a greater degree than it was in 2000 BC. Animal husbandry has existed for fifteen thousand years. Maybe globalization would spread a prion outbreak faster. But the point is we've never even observed localized prion collapse. If prions were that dangerous, there should already be regional areas that have transformed into total no-go zones.