A few things I can't get past in my simple mind. First is how the very first animal got TSE. We will probably never know. Second is how a prion can survive temperatures that have been tested up to 2000 degrees or radiation. Just doesn't seem possible.

Do you know if the scrappy disease transferred to the wild sheep or goats in those areas around the research pens? It seems to me that would have been the logical thing to happen.

speaking of the you know....

CWD has NOT always been in the soil. Period . Once it gets there it may well always be there. No existence of CWD prior to 1965

Steve, the researchers were doing something concerning mule deer, don't remember what now. They trapped bred mule deer does and placed them in a large research pen that had previously held scrappy infected sheep that were being studied by some other researchers. When the study ended they killed all the sheep. Afterwards the deer were placed in the same pens that were saturated with sheep urine/droppings/etc. After the does had the fawns the does were released back just north of Ft Collins, and others were sent to zoos, enclosures, other research areas in western states. The prevailing thought at the time was that Scrappie, being a TSE disease, was species specific. Which, it turns out, wasn't the case. Due to the lone incubation period the deer didn't show any signs of being sick when they were released or shipped out to other places.

The prevailing scientific knowledge at the time (1965...pre Mad Cow) said that the disease wouldn't jump to a new species.

CWD IS scrappy...just in deer instead of sheep, like Mad Cow in cows is the same.

Sheep raisers/breeders have eliminated scrappy as a problem by careful breeding of scrappy resistant sheep. Same thing could probably be done with deer thru forward thinking deer breeders.