Fatal diseases (many of a particularly humiliating slowly degenerative
sort), both genetic and acquired? Transmissable without the benefit of
a nucleic acid genome? Yikes! Especially if you've ever had a
transfusion, since these infectious proteins aren't destroyed by heat
or irradiation. There are a couple of articles on the Web
(http://www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/335/Prions.html and
http://www.nmia.com/~mdibble/prion.html) which sent me scurrying to the
health food store for beans.
Now I'm off to design a graphic symbol for meat packagers that
indicates that no sheep brains were fed to the animal whose succulent
parts lay encased in plastic in a potential consumer's tentative hand
-- anyone have an image of a lamb I could borrow? Do you think Bo Peep
would be too much of a stretch? "Bo Peep Meats: We lost our sheep, so
you can be sure that no scrapie, BSE or CJD lurks in this T-Bone"?
<sigh> I may have to wait for the next consumer panic to make my
fortune.
