Frederica Freyberg:
Chronic Wasting Disease now affects deer in some 25 Wisconsin counties but is the disease more than a wildlife management concern affecting harvest numbers? In tonight’s look ahead, scientists from the University of Minnesota are now saying CWD should be treated as a public health issue because it’s probable, they say, it will jump to humans, much like Mad Cow Disease infected humans in Britain. Michael Osterholm is director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. He joins us now from Minneapolis. And thanks very much for doing so.

Michael Osterholm:
Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:
We have also been told that CWD has never infected humans who’ve eaten or handled infected deer. Why are you saying that that’s probable to change?

Michael Osterholm:
Well first of all, we have to take a brief snapshot of history and understand that back in 1986 when the first cows were showing signs and symptoms of a very similar condition, which was labeled Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, everyone around the world said don’t worry about it. There’s a species barrier. This prion will not jump from animals to humans. Of course, we learned ten years later that in fact it had already jumped from animals to humans and we had the result outbreak of Mad Cow Disease or what in our business we call Variant CreutzfeldtJakob disease. And if you look at the conditions today’s for what’s happening with Chronic Wasting Disease in whitetail deer and elk in North America, very, very similar situation. We have enough data from the laboratory side to say that it’s surely possible that this particular prion could in fact go from deer or elk to humans. And what we don’t want to do is find out ten years from now that we wish we had done something about that when we could have and didn’t.

Frederica Freyberg:
Not only that, you don’t believe that these infections will be isolated. Why is that?

Michael Osterholm:
Well, first of all, we have on our hands a wildlife disaster that’s unfolding right before our eyes. When this disease was first detected in Colorado a number of years ago, at that time, people didn’t really understand how it might spread throughout the entire area of North America. Well unfortunately cervid
game farms or farms that raise elk and whitetail deer move these animals around quite frequently, often from one state to another. And in the process they had very lax security, meaning that the fencing and so forth was such that these animals could get out. Well with these animals, they also brought the prion to areas that had not otherwise previously had it. Minnesota, Wisconsin — all the states in the upper Midwest are a classic example. And then what happened though after that occurred, some states when they first had the problem aggressively attacked it, tried to deal with the game farm issues, did everything they could to contain the wildlife infections that were occurring around the area and slowed it down. States like Wisconsin did little. I think the DNR response in Wisconsin was nothing short of a wildlife disaster. And now you have counties like Iowa County in Wisconsin where you may have 30 to 35% of the deer that are infected. We have a problem right here in Minnesota, where fortunately our DNR has been very aggressive in trying to limit transmission around game farms where this is found, but still it’s been a challenge. The prion is now in at least 24 states. It’s in two provinces in Canada. Estimates are now made that as high as 17,000 people are eating Chronic Wasted-infected venison every year. And as that number of states where infections occur increases, where the number of infected animals in each of these states increases, we’re only going to see more and more humans exposed to this prion.

Frederica Freyberg:
What would happen to a person infected with CWD?

Michael Osterholm:
Well first of all let me be really clear. We don’t know that in fact this prion that causes Chronic Wasting Disease in the whitetail deer and elk will be transmitted to humans. But I think that there’s enough scientific evidence now to say it surely is possible. We don’t want to wait until that happens. We’d expect not to see the big impact of this in North America for another ten years even if it were happening today. And finally, there’s no treatment. And so these people from the time that they have their first signs and symptoms till they die may very well be a year or less.

Frederica Freyberg:
Now, your predictions or projections may certainly come off as alarmist. How do you respond to that?

Michael Osterholm:
Well, I think it’s just the opposite. I think our job is not to scare people out of their wits. It’s to scare them into their wits. You know, again, let’s just go back to what happened in 1986. I was one of those then that said this is a serious problem here in England and we need to do everything we can to limit and even prevent any of these infected animals from getting into the meat supply. You had the head of agriculture for England putting his grandchildren on TV eating hamburger showing that in fact that they were safe to eat when in fact they weren’t at all. So we’re in the same boat right now. So you can argue that what we’re saying is scary. What I think is scary is what if we’re right and there really is transmission and we have all these cases eight to ten years from now? All we’re suggesting is, first of all, we need to continue hunting. Hunting is a major way of maintaining the relatively smaller herds of these animals which reduces the potential for transmission. But what we’re calling for is these animals should be tested before they’re ever consumed, before they’re ever put into meat processing. We need a national, comprehensive program to respond, where hunters can have access to rapid, reliable and easy to use tests right in the field, potentially, where they then know is this deer infected or not. If we see potentially-infected deer in the field, the meaning that they show the classic symptoms of a wasting disease kind of picture, we should be offering rewards to hunters who actually shoot those deer and make them available to the DNR to limit them. Right now why would you want to shoot a deer like that if that’s going to be your deer for the year? We should be rewarding people. So there’s a lot we can do that’s not scary. It’s practical. And in the end, what will be scary is ten years from now if you and I are having this same interview but in that case talking about potentially many cases of human Chronic Wasting Disease in people.

Frederica Freyberg:
Indeed. Michael Osterholm out of Minneapolis, thank you very much.

Michael Osterholm:
Thank you.