Yale M.D. makes leap in mad cow research
Though challenging the accepted theory of the causes of mad cow disease may seem like madness itself, a team of researchers from the Yale School of Medicine has announced potentially groundbreaking findings concerning the origins of the disease.
Football | Holy Cow! Double-overtime win at the Bowl
Women's Volleyball | Two big wins in league opener
Muenzer: Remix to Ignition
Even though I tend to favor conventional wisdom, in this case it may be wrong; prion theory neatly explains the genetic component of such diseases as well as the species barrier breach which seems to have occurred with scrapie/bovine encephalitis/new variant CJD, whereas if a virus is the cause, these questions are reopened. What's more, scientists claim to have demonstrated the ability of prion proteins to "react" (assuming this is form of molecular, i.e., chemical "reaction") with their complementary non-prion proteins, thus causing the non-prion proteins to refold and become prions as well, under strictly sterile (no biological factors, such as viruses involved) laboratory conditions. This demonstrates a mechanism of infection. Actually prion theory probably is the new conventional wisdom for these types of diseases, presumably relegating viral explanations to the realm of obsolete dogma.