On Wed, 26 Jun 1996, Giovanni Maga wrote:
> In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.960620222815.6463D-100000 at garcia.efn.org>, "K.
> Weber" <kweber at efn.org> wrote:
>>> > Back to the contagiousness issue. I do not know of any
> > chronically contagious viruses. Thank god.
>> Not sure what you mean by chronically contagious, but never heard about
> hepatitis virus? It sounds like that.
I do know what hepatitis virus is. People think that because chronic
infection of deep body tissue is involved in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis--
(the brain for instance) this means that one person can get it from another
This is not true. It is very hard to explain. Funding sources are
sometimes afraid to fund viral research for fear that results would panic
the public. The public widely believes that if a disease is initiated by
a virus it must be chronically contagious.
> > >The ones that we hear of
> > chiefly affect cannibals and Europeans (BSE/HSE) and you do have to be
> > exposed to raw infected meat.
>> BSE affect bovines (cows, calves), scrapie affects sheeps, both all over
> the world (not european cattles only) kuru affects humans (but it was
> described in a cannibalistic population well outside Europe), CJS affects
> humans all over the world. Thus the Europeans/cannibals theory is not true
> (or maybe you mean European cannibals?). Most important of all, the
> ethiologic agent of these deseases (prion protein) IS NOT A VIRUS, but
> indeed is a protein. The infectiveness of raw meat (to be precise nervous
> tissue or thymus) has still to be clearly proven.
> Just a quick observation.
Thanks for the input . I wil make this clearer. Isuppose Iwas
thinking of the book The Virus That Ate Cannibals. When the info about
BSE and prions came out a Dutch astronomer friend wrote me that he
thought that CFS/ME might also be caused by prions. He heads the Dutch ME
association. I wondered if he thought that some cases of CFS/ME might
presage later HSE.>
