Joe Rogan Experience #1154 - Doug Duren & Bryan Richards

1. 0:02 – 3:21

   CWD arrives on Doug’s Wisconsin farm and why it worries hunters

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:02

      Five, four, three, two, one. Yee-haw, and we're live. My good friend, Doug Duren. Hello, Douglas.

   2. DDDoug Duren0:10

      Hello, Joe Rogan.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:11

      Good to see you as always.

   4. DDDoug Duren0:12

      Oh, man, it is good to be here.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      And, uh, Brian Richards, your friend, a wildlife biologist, and, um... Well, we're gonna talk about a bunch of things. But one of the things that I wanted to talk about is this scary disease that, uh... Well, when Ted Nugent was on the podcast, uh, he downplayed the, uh, consequences and effects of something called CWD, or chronic wasting disease, which has made it onto your farm. And you live in Wisconsin, and you have this beautiful place that we visited when we did the Meat Eater television show. And, um, this is a new thing, that this chronic wasting disease was just... It just, it decimates the deer's health and, and kills them. And the suspicion is that some of this, at least, comes from these high-fence operations where people grow deer, um, and treat them, like... Instead of, like, a wild animal, they treat them like a domesticated animal and have them all feeding off of the same pile of food and they share this disease. Is this all correct and accurate, Brian?

   6. BRBryan Richards1:16

      Boy, you just started on about an hour's worth of conversation.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:19

      (laughs)

   8. DDDoug Duren1:19

      (laughs)

   9. BRBryan Richards1:21

      Um, so yeah, just a little bit. I'm a, I'm a wildlife biologist with the National Wildlife Health Center, US Geological Survey up in Madison, Wisconsin. And so, uh, one of the things that I spend a lot of time on is chronic wasting disease. I wouldn't say that makes me necessarily an expert, but I've gotten to know a lot of people that I would call experts over the years, so I've gained a little bit of knowledge. So, I don't even... Where... Your, your statement there, we could start a number of different places.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:47

       Yeah. This disease, um, it essentially d- just... Well, just describe what it does to these animals and why it's such a major concern. It hasn't jumped to humans yet.

   11. BRBryan Richards1:59

       That we're aware of.

   12. JRJoe Rogan2:00

       That we're aware of.

   13. BRBryan Richards2:01

       Correct.

   14. JRJoe Rogan2:01

       But it is a possibility, a very real possibility.

   15. BRBryan Richards2:04

       We can't rule it out at this point in time. Science is unable to rule it out. So, okay, that's a great place to start. Why would we care about this thing called chronic wasting disease? And I, I would argue, and, and some other scientists have argued, there's two major reasons. Number one is the impacts of this disease on members of the deer family themselves, and the other is that we cannot rule out the possibility that CWD could become a human health issue at some point down the road. Okay? So you kind of nailed those two. With regard to deer or members of the deer family, white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, moose, and most recently it was picked up in, in reindeer in Norway, of all places, um, we, we could articulate some reasons, some rationale why w- you know, this disease might be thought of as being important. The first we look at is, would be geographic spread. So, you know, CWD 20 years ago was thought to be this really novel thing in a very restricted geographic range in southeastern Wyoming, adjacent northeastern Colorado, and maybe a little spillover into Nebraska. Uh, wildlife biologists, wildlife disease specialists looked at this disease. It was interesting. Uh, we didn't know much about it at that point in time, but it seemed to be very isolated there.

2. 3:21 – 4:20

   What CWD does to deer: a fatal prion brain disease

   1. JRJoe Rogan3:21

      What does it do to the deer?

   2. BRBryan Richards3:22

      It kills deer, right?

   3. JRJoe Rogan3:24

      Right, but how does it kill them?

   4. BRBryan Richards3:25

      All right, so this is a member of a family of diseases called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or TSEs. So big long words. Transmissible means it can go from animal A to animal B. Spongiform means looks like a sponge, and encephalopathy means disease of the brain. So you put it together, and so this disease results in holes in the brain resulting in progressive neurological degeneration followed by death. Okay? It's a, it's a death sentence for deer.

   5. JRJoe Rogan3:57

      And there's no cure for it? It's not like you can capture the deer and give them some sort of medication?

   6. BRBryan Richards4:02

      No cure, um, for these diseases. The suite of diseases ca-... You know, there's, uh, there's, uh, members of this TSE group of diseases in humans. Most familiar is, is one called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

   7. JRJoe Rogan4:15

      Mm-hmm. Right. So it's very similar to mad cow disease.

   8. BRBryan Richards4:18

      They're in the same family. So that's one that's in-

3. 4:20 – 5:36

   Prions ("preons"): what they are and why they persist

   1. JRJoe Rogan4:20

      So it comes from prions?

   2. BRBryan Richards4:21

      Well, I'd say prions. You could-

   3. JRJoe Rogan4:23

      Something... Prions? Sorry.

   4. BRBryan Richards4:23

      ... say prions.

   5. JRJoe Rogan4:23

      I don't know how to say it. I'll just read it.

   6. BRBryan Richards4:24

      Oh, no worries.

   7. DDDoug Duren4:25

      (laughs)

   8. JRJoe Rogan4:25

      (laughs)

   9. BRBryan Richards4:26

      Um, it's interesting. You know, there's a... Uh, it goes back and forth on whether it's preon or prion. Stan Prosener, who received the Nobel Laureate for his work on these diseases, coined the term preon.

   10. JRJoe Rogan4:38

       Mm-hmm.

   11. BRBryan Richards4:39

       And in his first publication describing these diseases, he did a phonetic spelling, and it's preon. So other researchers, it's, uh, especially, you know, um, some from across the pond, um, say it's got to be prion. Now, the main reason that... You know, some of them I've talked to about that is that it irks Stan Prosener when he hears it called prion.

   12. JRJoe Rogan4:58

       Oh, so we'll say preon.

   13. BRBryan Richards5:00

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan5:00

       So I'll say preon from now on.

   15. BRBryan Richards5:01

       (laughs)

   16. JRJoe Rogan5:01

       Now, um, this disease, which people know as mad cow disease, um, obviously, uh, is transmissible to humans. And, um, that's one of the reasons why people are very scared that this could potentially jump from deer into humans. And correct me if I'm wrong, but it also is making its way into the actual plants that these animals eat.

   17. BRBryan Richards5:24

       You're correct on both accounts. So with BSE, mad cow disease, that was an interesting disease, where it resulted from, in essence, turning cows into cannibals. We were recycling-

4. 5:36 – 10:53

   How TSEs spread in people and livestock: kuru and mad cow lessons

   1. JRJoe Rogan5:36

      Which also exists in New Guinea, right, with cannibals-

   2. BRBryan Richards5:38

      Exis-... With, with-

   3. JRJoe Rogan5:39

      ... Jacob Creutzfeldt.

   4. BRBryan Richards5:39

      With, with kuru-

   5. JRJoe Rogan5:40

      Right.

   6. BRBryan Richards5:40

      ... which is a human, uh, disease, uh, TSE, likely started when, um, one individual developed Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. That individual died. And as is the practice, was the practice in the Fore tribe in Papua New Guinea, uh, they practiced ritualized cannibalism to honor the dead and to help release the spirits from, you know, deceased family members. So they would feed upon the c- uh, upon the corpse and pour, you know, the bodies of their deceased. So when one individual died of probably some variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, then the causative agent, the prion protein, which is concentrated in the central nervous system and lymphatic systems of, you know, of diseased patients, this was fed back to other members of the family and the extended family.And so when they got sick and died-

   7. DDDoug Duren6:32

      Hmm.

   8. BRBryan Richards6:32

      ... fed it again. So we saw that with kuru, um, in, uh, in the 19-, I believe it was in 1960 or around there, um, it was realized that this cannibalistic behavior was likely the result, you know, or was likely the cause of disease transmission. Cannibalism was outlawed. And at that point in time, you broke completely the d- disease transmission cycle, so no more new cases of kuru, but they had lingering cases with an extended incubation period up to 40 years later before kuru finally burned out of that population.

   9. DDDoug Duren7:08

      Huh.

   10. BRBryan Richards7:09

       Whoa. So now with, with BSE, or mad cow disease, we were doing exactly, in essence, the same thing. Not exactly the same thing, but in essence. So in an effort to maximize production and reduce the amount of waste, when they butchered cattle we would take all the offal, O-F-F-A-L, you know, the hide, the bones, the, the parts that are inedible, and we would render them, cook them at high temperature and typically, you know, high pressure as well, and it turns into a slurry, a high protein slurry. You skim the fat off the top of that and then dehydrate the rest of it, and you have, you know, kind of a meat and bone meal, a high protein supplement. Realizing that cattle grow faster and produce better when they're, when on a high, higher protein diet, it seemed reasonable to use waste material from cows to feed back to cows.

   11. DDDoug Duren8:02

       Oof.

   12. BRBryan Richards8:02

       So at some point turning, turning-

   13. DDDoug Duren8:05

       (laughs) It doesn't get better, Joe.

   14. BRBryan Richards8:05

       Turning cows into cannibals.

   15. DDDoug Duren8:07

       Yeah.

   16. BRBryan Richards8:07

       So at some point in time a cow developed a TSE, a prion disease. Whether it came from scrapie, the TSE of sheep, or arose on its own is unknown, but that cow died. It was rendered into meat and bone meal, and this high protein feed was then fed out to hundreds to thousands.

   17. DDDoug Duren8:27

       And correct me if I'm wrong, but these prions, they, they could survive up to more than a thousand degree, uh, temperature?

   18. BRBryan Richards8:34

       Yeah, surviving is kind of a, a, a strange term, Joe, in that they're not alive-

   19. DDDoug Duren8:38

       Right.

   20. BRBryan Richards8:38

       ... to start with. It's a protein. Uh, they can persist. Um-

   21. DDDoug Duren8:42

       Okay.

   22. BRBryan Richards8:42

       ... they cannot be inactivated. So yeah, it's, you, you got to cook pretty hot.

   23. DDDoug Duren8:45

       So it's not necessarily, these prions are not necessarily a living thing like a disease or a virus or a bacteria?

   24. BRBryan Richards8:52

       Well, they're a disease-causing agent.

   25. DDDoug Duren8:54

       Ah.

   26. BRBryan Richards8:54

       But they are incredibly unique. So they're an etiologic agent, like a virus-

   27. DDDoug Duren8:59

       Mm-hmm.

   28. BRBryan Richards8:59

       ... a bacteria or, you know, a parasite could be causing disease. But all these other things have genetic material. They're alive, which allows them to change rapidly to evolve over time. So the, the whole concept that you have a protein, a protein that all mammals produce in a normal form can be converted after production into a disease-associated form that has these radically different characteristics. One that you mentioned was, you know, resistance to heat, heat treatment. A normal prion protein, and we have billions of them circulating in our bodies right now, um, have a specific purpose, a cellular purpose. We don't know exactly what it is, but it's likely involved in some sort of intracellular communication. It's a string of around 250 amino acids, uh, so a relatively short protein. It does whatever it does and then the body recycles, breaks that chain of amino acids down into its component parts and recycles it. Turns out that normal cellular prion protein likely has a half-life of maybe four to six hours, okay? So you're producing them relatively constantly. Then there's the disease-associated form.

   29. DDDoug Duren10:12

       Huh.

   30. BRBryan Richards10:12

       And all disease-associated prions start as the normal cellular prion. So they're converted from one three-dimensional form to a different form, okay? And this different form has these radically different characteristics. One is heat resistance. Another is UV light resistance. Um, I mentioned that the normal cellular prion protein has a half-life of maybe four to six hours. The disease-associated ones can persist in the environment for years and potentially up to decades, okay?
5. 10:53 – 13:11

   CWD’s stealth phase: incubation, shedding, and “Typhoid Mary” deer

   1. BRBryan Richards10:53

      So if a deer, ooh, sheds infectious agent, this prion protein, and so, you know, from the time a deer is infected it's probably around two years before it develops clinical signs of disease, goes downhill, loses its fear of humans, dramatic weight loss, um, all of those things. That incubation period, you know, it's probably shedding infectious agent for the vast majority of that time period. So it looks healthy, but it's able, of transmitting disease. We call that, you know, a Typhoid Mary syndrome.

   2. DDDoug Duren11:27

      The two deer that we, uh, that were positive on our farm, two bucks, two and a half year old bucks, were, we had them tested. As you know, we're, for the last several years we've been getting, uh... Initially we got our, uh, only bucks tested and then the last three or four years we've gotten all the deer tested. They were, uh, two and a half year old bucks, perfectly, looked perfectly healthy. And these are the first ones that you've tested for, that, that tested positive? That tested positive, and we'd tested in excess of 35 deer over the last, well, more than that-

   3. BRBryan Richards11:58

      Now-

   4. DDDoug Duren11:58

      ... probably more like 50. During the incubation period would they still test positive?

   5. BRBryan Richards12:02

      At some point they will.

   6. DDDoug Duren12:03

      At some point?

   7. BRBryan Richards12:04

      Yeah.

   8. DDDoug Duren12:04

      So they could be spreading infectious agents without testing positive?

   9. BRBryan Richards12:07

      Yes. Yes.

   10. DDDoug Duren12:08

       Oh, fuck.

   11. BRBryan Richards12:08

       Absolutely.

   12. DDDoug Duren12:09

       (laughs)

   13. BRBryan Richards12:09

       So it's, it's, uh, it's probably between three and six months out when we can test an animal test positive. But it's likely shedding infectious agent, at least at lower quantities, prior to that point in time. And so then, so it's shedding infectious agent, it's capable of transmitting disease, okay, long before it looks clinically ill. And so that's one of the real challenges with this disease from a management standpoint-They look perfectly healthy, they act perfectly healthy, but they're starting to have that progressive neurological degeneration that we can only see very near the end of disease.

   14. JRJoe Rogan12:48

       So, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems like we could pot- potentially be facing a ticking time bomb of many, many, many deer that are wandering around out there right now that look totally normal, that are spreading this stuff all over the place and they're, they're acting normally, they look perfectly healthy, and then, obviously, with this multi-year incubation period, this could just cascade.

6. 13:11 – 14:42

   From localized to global: spread across states and into Norway

   1. BRBryan Richards13:11

      And I think we've seen evidence of that now. Um, it started out, you know, we talked about being isolated disease. It was picked up in Wisconsin at the end of 2001. Um, as of today, CWD has been now pen- picked up in 25 states in captive and/or free-ranging populations in white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, or moose, two Canadian provinces. Uh, in addition, it was picked up in South Korea (clears throat) , and that was real interesting. It was in captive elk, and those elk still had Canadian ear tags in them, so we pretty much know-

   2. JRJoe Rogan13:46

      Mm-hmm.

   3. BRBryan Richards13:46

      ... how CWD... You know, those, those elk didn't swim across the Pacific pond. Most recently, it was picked up, uh, two years ago in free-ranging reindeer in Norway, and subsequent to that, it was picked up in a small handful, like three or four moose and a red deer in Norway and a single moose in Finland. There's real concern (clears throat) over in Norway, um, with reindeer, okay? So reindeer are very gregarious. You know, white-tailed deer-

   4. DDDoug Duren14:18

      Caribou, same.

   5. BRBryan Richards14:19

      You know, caribou, reindeer, so not unusual to see them in herds of hundreds of animals, so very, very different than what we see with white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, or moose. We don't see those huge herds. Well, with elk you can in the wintertime. But anyway, it's thought that this gregarious behavior might really facilitate transmission in reindeer, right?

   6. JRJoe Rogan14:41

      Hm.

7. 14:42 – 19:41

   Norway’s hard-line response: stamping out an entire reindeer herd unit

   1. BRBryan Richards14:42

      So when it was picked up in reindeer, Norway said, "You know, we- maybe we should do something." It's an interesting story in that, um, you know, Norway's got experience with scrapie in sheep.

   2. JRJoe Rogan14:54

      Mm-hmm.

   3. BRBryan Richards14:54

      Uh, and so they have a long history of, uh-

   4. JRJoe Rogan14:56

      What is scrapie?

   5. BRBryan Richards14:57

      Scrapie is the same as... Well, it's the same family of diseases in sheep. It's actually the first one that was described, scrapie, we've known about since the early 1700s. Uh, disease in domestic sheep, and it's called scrapie because of the behavior these animals, once they enter the clinical phase of disease, display, and they, they seem like they itch bad. And so they'll go up to fence posts and other objects and they will literally rub their hide off of their body, so that's the name scrapie.

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:26

      Whoa.

   7. BRBryan Richards15:26

      And it's the same progressive neurological disorder followed by death. Now, you think about it, so as this disease creates vacuoles in the brain, it's killing off neurons. And so without those neurons firing, you fall into that progressive degeneration, and yet, at some point, your body can no longer survive. And that's what's really spooky about how this thing kills. So anyway, go back to Norway. When they detected CWD-

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:53

      Brian, try to keep this a little bit closer to your sorry.

   9. BRBryan Richards15:54

      Oh, right.

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:54

       You're very soft-spoken.

   11. BRBryan Richards15:56

       Oh, no worries. I'll talk... I can hear myself plenty well. How about that one?

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:58

       Yeah, yeah, I know. It's just the problem is the recording.

   13. BRBryan Richards16:00

       Mm-hmm.

   14. JRJoe Rogan16:00

       Sorry.

   15. BRBryan Richards16:00

       Okay. No worries. So when they picked up CWD in reindeer in Norway, um, the researchers over there had witnessed what we... Uh, our lack of success on this side of the pond over the course of the last 20 years. They took it very, very seriously. Um, so they took kind of some harsh medicine. Uh, they announced their plans, that they were going to eliminate a herd unit. They were gonna kill every reindeer in an entire herd unit-

   16. JRJoe Rogan16:28

       Wow.

   17. BRBryan Richards16:28

       ... in Norway. The idea is to eliminate the host population. It's called stamping out, and it works in a pen. This is the first time it'd been done realistically in a free-ranging population. Whole idea is we don't have effective tools for management of this disease. They were very fearful of what would happen if this spread throughout that reindeer population and throughout other reindeer herds.

   18. DDDoug Duren16:52

       And like Alaska, they have multiple herds. Like last year, I hunted caribou with, with Steve up in the, uh, uh-

   19. BRBryan Richards16:59

       Perch.

   20. DDDoug Duren16:59

       ... 40 Mile River area, and, but there were, you know... And, and so they're very, uh, well, localized is, is probably not... But at least they have a range that they move through. So-

   21. BRBryan Richards17:08

       Yep.

   22. DDDoug Duren17:08

       And in, in, uh, Norway, they have two or three different herds.

   23. BRBryan Richards17:12

       Many more than that.

   24. DDDoug Duren17:13

       So-

   25. BRBryan Richards17:13

       So I don't know exactly how many herd units they have.

   26. DDDoug Duren17:14

       But the point was, is that you could isolate one of the herds.

   27. BRBryan Richards17:17

       Yep. So the idea is, before this gets to be any worse, before it gets any farther, let's take it out. So they had a hunting season. They allowed, uh, hunters to take as many as they could, which was a little over 1,000 reindeer, and then they came in with government agents, sharpshooters.

   28. JRJoe Rogan17:32

       But isn't there a concern that the hunters could eat something with CWD and then catch it?

   29. BRBryan Richards17:38

       Well, that's always a concern. But w- we can talk about human health.

   30. JRJoe Rogan17:41

       Yeah.
8. 19:41 – 21:43

   Human health risk and the species barrier—plus the problem of CWD strains

   1. JRJoe Rogan19:41

      Why the decision to let human beings consume them?

   2. BRBryan Richards19:44

      Well, at this point in time, the- we really don't have any evidence that s- that humans can get CWD.

   3. JRJoe Rogan19:50

      Could that potentially, though, be an incubation period issue, just like it is with deer, maybe extended with humans? 'Cause you were talking about w- how do you... what's the cor- correct pronunciation? I was pronouncing it wrong.

   4. BRBryan Richards20:00

      Kuru.

   5. JRJoe Rogan20:00

      No, no, no. What-

   6. BRBryan Richards20:01

      Or-

   7. JRJoe Rogan20:01

      Yuk- Yukub Krutchefell?

   8. BRBryan Richards20:03

      Oh, Creutz- Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

   9. JRJoe Rogan20:04

      Creutz- Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

   10. BRBryan Richards20:06

       Mm-hmm.

   11. JRJoe Rogan20:06

       So the- that has a long incubation period in human beings, correct?

   12. BRBryan Richards20:11

       Likely.

   13. JRJoe Rogan20:11

       Yeah.

   14. BRBryan Richards20:12

       Yeah, yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan20:12

       And mad cow, same thing? Could-

   16. BRBryan Richards20:14

       Extended incubation period.

   17. JRJoe Rogan20:15

       Yeah.

   18. BRBryan Richards20:15

       Kuru could... you know, some of the cases, it looks like we're up maybe even to 40, maybe even 50-year incubation period-

   19. JRJoe Rogan20:21

       That is crazy.

   20. BRBryan Richards20:22

       ... as individuals.

   21. JRJoe Rogan20:22

       Go ahead.

   22. DDDoug Duren20:22

       I wanna talk about kuru for a minute 'cause every time I talk to this guy, I mean, I've learned a lot from him about all kinds of things and diseases. But, uh, yesterday we were talking about kuru and, and one of the things that was interesting to me about it is that these tribes, the women and children contracted it-

   23. BRBryan Richards20:41

       Yeah, it's-

   24. DDDoug Duren20:42

       ... first.

   25. BRBryan Richards20:42

       Isn't that interesting? So-

   26. DDDoug Duren20:44

       And, and the reason why was the men ate the meat and the women and children ate the-

   27. BRBryan Richards20:50

       Internal organs.

   28. DDDoug Duren20:50

       ... internal organs and brains.

   29. BRBryan Richards20:52

       Yeah, so as-

   30. DDDoug Duren20:53

       Where it's concentrated.
9. 21:43 – 36:23

   Why dismissing CWD is misleading: comparing it to EHD and winter kill

   1. JRJoe Rogan21:43

      So w- a bunch of people reached out and some, some were very angry after Ted Nugent was on the podcast and, uh, I don't know how CWD got brought up. I don't, I don't know what the, the, the context was, I don't remember, but I remember him saying that winter kills more animals than CWD does. And, uh, many people were very angry that this was a gross simplification of what could be a ticking time bomb.

   2. BRBryan Richards22:06

      I, I guess I would... yeah, I'd, I'd have to agree with that. Um, there's another disease out there called epizootic hemorrhagic disease, EHD.

   3. JRJoe Rogan22:15

      Hm.

   4. BRBryan Richards22:15

      And-

   5. JRJoe Rogan22:16

      Yeah.

   6. BRBryan Richards22:16

      ... periodically you'll have significant outbreaks of this disease and in, in northern latitudes where, you know, the disease has not been present as often, you can see dramatic mortality, 80%, 90% of a herd can be killed in a single, you know, event, okay? But a very, you know, a distinction between these diseases, you know, EHD is spread by midges, little black no-see-ums, okay?

   7. JRJoe Rogan22:45

      Mm-hmm, a bug.

   8. BRBryan Richards22:46

      It's a bug.

   9. JRJoe Rogan22:46

      Yeah.

   10. BRBryan Richards22:46

       It actually transmits, transmits the disease. The virus from animal A to animal B or from the environment to animal A, either one. So while you have these pretty dramatic die-offs, as soon as the weather changes, after the first frost, the first hard frost kills off the midges and within about two weeks the disease cycle is broken completely. So it has significant impacts on a localized level periodically but the disease cycle, there's a definite end to the disease cycle and then it-

   11. DDDoug Duren23:17

       And then it's no longer present-

   12. BRBryan Richards23:19

       Well, the-

   13. DDDoug Duren23:19

       ... for that period of time or for a period of time anyway, right?

   14. BRBryan Richards23:22

       Yeah, the virus may persist in the environment but once the transmission cycle is broken, the mor- mortalities stop.

   15. JRJoe Rogan23:28

       And isn't there some, uh, genetically engineered food plots that they're putting together now and diff- different types of seed that, uh, inhibits midge growth and inhibits EHD?

   16. BRBryan Richards23:40

       I'm not aware of that but I wouldn't doubt it.

   17. JRJoe Rogan23:42

       And I think there's also-

   18. BRBryan Richards23:42

       I wouldn't doubt it.

   19. JRJoe Rogan23:42

       ... some stuff they're doing that, uh, bolsters the animals' immune system. They're, they're supplementing some of the, the food with, uh, I don't know what they're using but it bolsters the animals' immune system, makes them less susceptible to it.

   20. BRBryan Richards23:55

       And populations that have been hispo- ex- or exposed to EHD and, you know, over time definitely develop a herd immunity to it, okay?

   21. JRJoe Rogan24:05

       And is EHD transferrable to humans?

   22. BRBryan Richards24:07

       Um, no. We don't... not that we've ever seen. There's no evidence that it is. This is a disease of deer and i- you know, it's... it also can get into livestock as well.

   23. JRJoe Rogan24:15

       So even if people get bitten by these midges, there's still no concern that we could potentially get EHD?

   24. BRBryan Richards24:21

       Not EHD, no.

   25. JRJoe Rogan24:22

       No.

   26. BRBryan Richards24:22

       So contrast that, this disease EHD with a very definite end to the transmission cycle. First frost kills off the midges. With CWD, there's no known ecological factor which signals the end of the transmission cycle so that's why we see prevalence, or the proportion of animals that are positive in individual, you know, locations and individual herds, it just keeps going up, up, up. In captive, um, facilities, uh, the, the Hall Farm in Wisconsin where CWD was first detected in 2002, the, the place was depopulated in 2006, prevalence was nearly 80%, so four out of five deer in that captive cervid facility had it.

   27. JRJoe Rogan25:04

       Wow.

   28. BRBryan Richards25:05

       More recently we had, uh, a farm, a deer farm in Iowa-... where, you know, a disease had gone undetected for some period of time and when the herd was depopulated, again, about 80% prevalence, but this was a big herd. So there were over 200 positives in this single high-fenced enclosure. And so winter's not gonna change that. It grows, so no stop. There's no known feature which stops the transmission cycle. And so when you say that something like EHD kills a lot of deer, yes, it does, but the disease transmission cycle stops. With CWD, we don't know anything that stops it.

   29. DDDoug Duren25:45

       It's- EHD is more like the flu.

   30. JRJoe Rogan25:50

       Have you had it on your- your farm?
10. 36:23 – 54:17

    Environmental contamination and agriculture: plants, hay bales, and exposure vs infection

    1. JRJoe Rogan36:23

       Mm-hmm. Is there any evidence that we- that any of these deer have transferred this to livestock or that it's gone into, uh, agriculture, into food sources, corn and what have you, that could, could be consumed by people even that are vegetarians?

    2. BRBryan Richards36:36

       Mm-hmm. Okay. Interesting question. So with regard to transmission into cattle, it's basically the same situation as with humans. No evidence that it has. But in an experimental sense, we can push it over that species barrier. Okay? Now interesting you bring up plants, because we have shown, uh, research that we've done at the National Wildlife Health Center has shown that if you grow some plant types in a slurry, a concentrate of prion protein, that those prions can be uptaken through the roots and deposited into stems and leaves.

    3. JRJoe Rogan37:15

       Oof.

    4. BRBryan Richards37:16

       Okay? And so that's one possible mechanism. A second is that ... So prions themselves, the disease associated prions tend to f- form very tight chemical bonds with various surfaces. And I showed him a paper on the way out here yesterday where they bind to just about anything. They bind to plants as well. So that deer that's out there w- CWD positive, shedding infectious agent out into the environment through its urine, through its saliva, through its feces. So if a deer urinates, if a deer with CWD urinates on plants-... the prions have a tendency to bind to those plants, form a chemical bond. It's not just dried on, it forms a chemical bond to the plant.

    5. JRJoe Rogan37:57

       So they literally become part of the plant?

    6. BRBryan Richards37:59

       It's b- yeah, okay? So a deer could eat those plants and that could be one of the possible transmission mechanisms.

    7. JRJoe Rogan38:09

       (exhales)

    8. BRBryan Richards38:09

       So that's the second one. The third one has, uh, you know, uh, is speculated about and some folks have looked at and, and it has potential impacts for, um, agricultural commodities. So when CWD was, you know, 20, 30 years ago was really, really rare, it probably couldn't happen. But now it's in 25 states, vast geographic areas. We have, um, just south of where he lives, in adult males, nearly 50% prevalence. So when you kill that big buck, take a coin out of your pocket, flip it in the air, and that's the odds that that deer has CWD.

    9. DDDoug Duren38:45

       And when he says, "Just south," it's-

    10. BRBryan Richards38:47

        Just south.

    11. DDDoug Duren38:47

        ... 15 miles.

    12. BRBryan Richards38:48

        Okay.

    13. JRJoe Rogan38:49

        Geez.

    14. BRBryan Richards38:49

        So now let's go out west-

    15. JRJoe Rogan38:51

        50% of them.

    16. BRBryan Richards38:52

        Or yes, or, you know, so let's go out-

    17. JRJoe Rogan38:54

        20% prevalence-

    18. BRBryan Richards38:55

        To, uh-

    19. JRJoe Rogan38:55

        ... overall in the county-

    20. BRBryan Richards38:56

        Yeah.

    21. JRJoe Rogan38:56

        ... at this point.

    22. BRBryan Richards38:57

        (exhales) Let's go up into the, the big agricultural areas in Saskatchewan or out west, okay? So you got a mule deer herd out there with CWD, and let's say maybe 20% overall of that herd is CWD positive. You've been out in some of those big wheat fields and hayfields, how many mule deer are standing out there before sunset?

    23. JRJoe Rogan39:17

        A shitload.

    24. BRBryan Richards39:18

        Yeah. Okay, so take that amount times 20%, or that amount, whatever percent have CWD, figure out how many times does the deer defecate or urinate on a daily basis, and that's a bunch. And now think about the possibility that when you harvest those agricultural foodstuffs and roll it up into big bales that you might have fecal material rolled up into those big bales.

    25. JRJoe Rogan39:44

        Not just might, right? I mean, most likely.

    26. BRBryan Richards39:47

        Um, we'd need a graduate student that we could have, you know, pick apart large bales of hay to really prove that, um, but I mean, it's almost certainly.

    27. JRJoe Rogan39:56

        Yeah.

    28. DDDoug Duren39:56

        You know, and I-

    29. BRBryan Richards39:56

        So now we're, now we're putting those on semi-trailers-

    30. JRJoe Rogan39:59

        Mm-hmm.
11. 54:17 – 1:17:20

    What can be done now: disposal, carcass movement, regulations, and deer farms

    1. JRJoe Rogan54:17

       Okay. What, if anything, can be done?

    2. DDDoug Duren54:23

       Well, I try to break this stuff down to, like, the most basic levels so a guy like me can understand it. Um, buy time, pay for science. That's sort of one of the things. Slow the sped- s- slow the spread of the disease. There's a lot of work being done, um, uh, all kinds of studies being done, um, different organizations and, and the, and the government. Uh, unfortunately, in Wisconsin, not as much as we should be doing. We're, you know, we're a hotbed of it. I think that in Wisconsin, quite honestly, that we've become an example of how not to handle a disease. And, uh, a lot of the other states have begun to, um, you know, take that idea that if you don't have it, you don't want it. So let's do what we can to stop it from coming here. That's why you're seeing things like, let's not transfer carcasses, that... You know, there's bans on being able to transfer, uh, carcasses in Wisconsin. In, in some cases, you can't take it to another county. You can take the finished meat, so you have to bone your meat in, uh, in the area, and then you can take it home, um, which, you know, is a bit of a problem for, you know, for some folks. Um, uh, we're beginning to stop the movement of, of captive deer-... from one, uh, farm to the other. But that's just recent and, and there've been hearings on that lately.

    3. JRJoe Rogan55:46

       Yeah.

    4. DDDoug Duren55:46

       So we have-

    5. JRJoe Rogan55:47

       So people resist that, right? There's-

    6. BRBryan Richards55:49

       Sure. If your, if your economic vi- vi- vitality depends on selling and moving live deer, you're gonna be opposed to restrictions on your economic activity.

    7. JRJoe Rogan56:01

       But that is one of the primary infection sources.

    8. BRBryan Richards56:03

       It's one of the infectious sources, yeah. So it'll-

    9. DDDoug Duren56:06

       He'll always correct you-

    10. BRBryan Richards56:07

        When you say something like prime. (laughs) . What, what Doug's getting at is-

    11. DDDoug Duren56:11

        This is a, like a primatologist. He says no bullshit. He wants the... (laughs) .

    12. JRJoe Rogan56:13

        (laughs) .

    13. BRBryan Richards56:13

        (laughs) . Yeah.

    14. DDDoug Duren56:13

        He's gonna like break it down.

    15. JRJoe Rogan56:15

        So that's-

    16. BRBryan Richards56:15

        It's, it's a world I live in, so...

    17. DDDoug Duren56:17

        Sure. Yeah.

    18. BRBryan Richards56:17

        We think of there's two-

    19. JRJoe Rogan56:18

        I appreciate their world.

    20. BRBryan Richards56:19

        ... there's two mechanisms, primary mechanisms if we lump them together for how CWD moves. One is deer, to deer, to deer, to deer. That slow diffusive process of, you know, moving out on the landscape. That's really hard to deal with. The other one is this anthropogenic or human assisted movement, where humans are moving infectious material and that might be how it got from Colorado to Wisconsin in the first place. It's highly unlikely that a mule deer or white-tailed deer got up, woke up one morning in Colorado and decided to, you know, go 900 miles across the Mississippi River and settle in, you know, western Dane County.

    21. DDDoug Duren56:55

        And back in the day, my dad and a bunch of his buddies used to go out to Colorado and they'd, uh, or Wyoming is actually where they went, and they hunted, uh, uh, uh, elk and mule deer and they bring the whole damn thing back. I mean, just what you did, right? You put it on the-

    22. JRJoe Rogan57:11

        Hmm.

    23. DDDoug Duren57:11

        ... back of the truck and off you went. And then, uh, processed. I mean, I can remember doing it in a garage in Cazenovia as a kid, you know, working there with knives, this was a great thing. Well, what do you do with the bones and the, you know, the, the non-meat stuff when you're done? Well, back in the day we use to, and it still happens, we take it out and put it in a, we'd call it bone pile, coyote pile or something like that.

    24. BRBryan Richards57:33

        It's dumped on the back 40.

    25. DDDoug Duren57:35

        It get... Yeah. Well.

    26. BRBryan Richards57:36

        Where, where that still could have infectivity if it was a positive animal. So how soon after-

    27. DDDoug Duren57:43

        So how it was brought to Wisconsin is-

    28. BRBryan Richards57:44

        Who knows? But anyway these are... So he's, he's absolutely correct. The, the 25 states that don't have CWD don't want to get it. They wanna do everything they can-

    29. JRJoe Rogan57:53

        What, what states are these? Like what is it? Eastern states or-

    30. BRBryan Richards57:55

        Southeastern states and some of the far western states haven't picked it up. Um, if, uh, if you go to our website you'll see a map there, um, that shows the current known distribution of where the disease is. So the other states really don't want it. They don't want it bad. So it makes sense, you know, to look at these anthropogenic factors, human assisted, identify the possible mechanisms, how humans could bring CWD to them, to you, and stop them either with regulatory frameworks or with education. Teaching hunters that it's a risk to move carcasses around is likely much more effective than just putting a rule in place that says you can't do it.
12. 1:17:20 – 1:23:36

    Long-term tools and tradeoffs: vaccines, genetic resistance, predators, and hunting policy battles

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:17:20

       Yep. Is there any consideration whatsoever that there could potentially be a cure?

    2. BRBryan Richards1:17:25

       Absolutely. Absolutely. See, we hit on a couple things, and I think it's important to talk just very briefly about some very generic disease management practices. Number one, and this would be wildlife disease, human disease, livestock disease. Prevention, number one. If you don't have it, don't get it. Do everything you can. That's why we get vaccinated, okay, for various diseases. If you do get disease, do everything you can to keep from moving it artificially. So that's why we don't wanna move the carcasses around. That's why, you know, we don't wanna move captive deer around. That's why when we w- when we had an Ebola outbreak in 2015 in, uh, Liberia and Ivory Coast, we stopped commercial airline flights. We didn't want people inadvertently moving it out. So prevent, don't move it around, conduct surveillance around areas where it is to see what's going on. And, and states are doing that very well, largely. The next one is a tough one. Do something about disease. Manage disease to try and knock down prevalence incidents and get rid of the disease. So, that's challenging, but two other things. Number one is support research, because if we don't have a cure today, we won't have one tomorrow either. Right?

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:18:37

       How is research funded right now?

    4. BRBryan Richards1:18:40

       Either by states or by the federal government, and there's not a ton of money. The last one is being transparent with your stakeholders, being open and communicative with them. So is, with many diseases, we have good therapeutics, okay? We can treat some diseases. CWD and other prion diseases, we have no therapeutics. We have no treatments right now, but people are certainly working towards them. Now it's likely it's gonna be very challenging to create a therapeutic, something that treats a prion disease, because treatment would then mean you would have to get past the blood-brain barrier. And once you start this cascading interaction of normal prions to disease-associated prions in the central nervous system, it's gonna be really, really challenging to stop that. I mean, it's a, it's a rollercoaster gone awry by the time it gets up into the brain. So then you're looking at preventative measures. The idea of vaccines is number one, and number two is looking at animals that, through their genetic profile, are resistant to disease. And there's some advances on each front. So-We can talk about vaccines for a moment. Um, so people, individual scientists, research outfits have been trying to develop vaccines for TSEs, for prion diseases, for a long time, okay? None have been successful. There's no, there's no human prion disease vaccines. There's nothing for BSE. There's nothing for scrapie. But there's research ongoing and there have been some advances. (inhales sharply) There is a Canadian research group that had a vaccine candidate for CWD. They thought it looked very promising so it went to a field, uh, production stage and they actually tried deploying this vaccine in a captive facility in Wyoming, okay, a research facility. It turned out that this vaccine was not ready for prime time and actually after, after, uh, um, giving this vaccine to some elk, giving a placego- placebo to other elk and then leaving 'em i- in a CWD-contaminated facility, actually the vaccinated animals got CWD faster and at higher rate than the non-vaccinated animals. So it turned-

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:20:49

       Hmm.

    6. BRBryan Richards1:20:49

       ... out to be almost an anti-vaccine, okay? So it didn't work. But-

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:20:53

       So instead of being inert, there was some sort of active CWD in the vaccine? Is that what it is?

    8. BRBryan Richards1:20:58

       No. I- i- it just, for whatever reason, it predisposed-

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:21:01

       It accelerated?

    10. BRBryan Richards1:21:02

        It predisposed the animals. So it, it, it was a massive failure, but even from failures you learn, okay? So they, they're working now and based, you know, they learned a lot in that experiment. There's another research group centered out of the University of New York who published a, a paper, I think in 2015 was their most recent work, and they've got a vaccine candidate that provides some degree of protection, quote-unquote protection from disease. Now, n- all but one of the animals that they gave this vaccine to and then challenged with CWD got CWD, okay? So that's not good news, but the average incubation time was extended something like 300 days. Okay? So they're on the right track. They have a mechanism that is somehow interfering with the conversion from normal host prion protein to the disease-associated form. It's very valuable. Now will they get there? We don't know. So, but think about it. Even if we do create a vaccine that works, that prevents CWD, and prevent as opposed to slowing, there's a very big distinction. So if you have a vaccine that makes the average course of disease three years instead of two years or four years instead of two years, they still have CWD.

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:22:21

        Are there-

    12. BRBryan Richards1:22:21

        They're not good.

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:22:21

        ... any deer farms that have 100% negative CWD deer in them? Like none of them test positive? Like-

    14. BRBryan Richards1:22:30

        The va- the vast majority of deer farms have never had CWD.

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:22:33

        The vast majority?

    16. BRBryan Richards1:22:34

        Absolutely.

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:22:34

        So there is a potential that you could isolate these populations of completely CWD-free deer and if there's some sort of a mass die-off you could reintroduce these deer into the wild?

    18. BRBryan Richards1:22:50

        Well, okay, so you're ... Again, you're, you're looking at the difference-

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:22:53

        I'm talking about just a giant die-off.

    20. BRBryan Richards1:22:55

        Yeah. Yeah. So you're, you're looking at the difference there between a herd that is CWD-free, which means it likely hasn't been exposed to CWD, versus animals that are CWD-resistant-

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:23:07

        Hmm.

    22. BRBryan Richards1:23:07

        ... through genetics.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:23:08

        Right.

    24. BRBryan Richards1:23:08

        Okay? So to date we have, we have not seen any deer that are genetically completely resistant. There are different genotypes of the prion protein gene out there that do impact the length of disease and also seem to have some impact on how often the frequency that these animals get disease. But even the genetically-resistant deer do get CWD.

Episode duration: 2:17:02