After seven years of living with chronic wasting disease in the Wisconsin deer herd, the initial fears about eating venison have calmed.
But the news last week of a death at UW Hospital due to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease brought to mind once again the dangers of the neurological illnesses known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or TSEs.
The UW-Madison patient died of classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a form of the brain disease not caused by eating meat from an ill animal. Still, for some people, the headlines about Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease may have renewed the fear of getting brain disease from chronic wasting disease infected deer.