125. Zombie Illnesses: Rabies, Parasites and Prions

What kind of illness turns deer into stumbling, soulless shells of themselves—bodies wasting away, but never truly dying? Or drives healthy young men into violent frenzies that leave them strapped to hospital beds, terrified of water? This week, we’re diving into the terrifying world of zombie illnesses—real diseases that hijack the brain and erase what makes us human. Show Notes: https://www.heartstartspounding.com/episodes/zombie-illnesses Subscribe on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding for bonus content and to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society. Patrons have access to bonus content as well as other perks. And members of our High Council on Patreon have access to our after-show called Footnotes, where I share my case file with our producer, Matt. Apple subscriptions are now live! Get access to bonus episodes and more when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Follow on Tik Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@heartstartspounding?lang=en and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/heartstartspounding/ for a daily dose of horror. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Direct deposit provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. See cash.app for more details.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kaelyn Moore?

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• 0:44Kaelyn Moore?

  built on a reputation for quality and reliability. So when it's time for your next Toyota, you could trade in for more. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details, or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places. This episode is brought to you by Bigelow Tea. By now, you should all know that I'm obviously a very curious person, and I'm also a big tea drinker. So I have always heard about this tea called Bigelow Constant Comment. It's been around forever, and people absolutely love it. I realized I had no idea what it actually tasted like. Obviously, I had to investigate, and now I'm obsessed. Constant Comment is this incredible black tea with real orange rind, cold-pressed orange oil, and sweet spices.

• 1:29Kaelyn Moore?

  The best way I can describe it is it's like Christmas in a cup, except you get to drink it all year long. Then I learned the story behind it, which made me love it even more. Constant Comment was created by Ruth Campbell Bigelow and her New York City kitchen in 1945. She shared it with her friends, and everyone kept talking about it. And all of those "Constant Comments" actually gave it its name. The recipe is still a Bigelow family secret over 80 years later. So this one is a mystery worth investigating for yourself. Bigelow Constant Comment. Curiously different, impossible to forget.

• 2:03Kaelyn Moore?

  On Sunday morning, September 12th in 2004, 15-year-old Gina Geezy of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, was attending mass with her family when all of a sudden, she heard something start softly thumping against the stained glass window next to her.

• 2:20Kaelyn Moore?

  She looked over and saw a tiny brown bat that seemed to be trying to get back outside. Soon, everyone in the church watched as the bat flew above their heads, trying desperately to find its way out of the door that it came in through, to no avail. Finally, someone in the back managed to knock the poor bat to the ground, and Gina knew that she had to help. With her mom's permission, she scooped up the bat in her hands and ran it outside. The bat was terrified, making these high-pitched squealing noises the entire time, but Gina held it tight until she could place it gently on a tree, and it would be able to find its way home. But as she went to place the bat down, it opened its little mouth, showing its razor-sharp teeth, and it bit down on her finger.

• 3:05Kaelyn Moore?

  Ouch! Jenna pulled her hand away, looking at the small bloody indent on her hand. It hurt a lot worse than it looked. It was so tiny, the bat had barely broken the skin on her finger. So Gina didn't really think much of it, nor did her mom when she showed her the wound back inside of the church. Little did they know, ignoring this wound was the worst possible thing they could have done.

• 3:31Kaelyn Moore?

  Three weeks later, Gina's mom called her down for breakfast, but the girl was so tired, she couldn't get out of bed. The lethargy continued over the next few days, getting worse and worse, and severely confusing her family. They ended up taking Gina to a neurologist, who seemed pretty concerned. Based on her symptoms, she was tested for things like meningitis and Lyme disease, but even though everything tested negative, she continued to get worse. And eventually, the girl was hospitalized at St. Agnes Hospital in her hometown. By this time, Gina was vomiting and had double vision. Her face was flushed, and then she started slipping in and out of consciousness.

• 4:15Kaelyn Moore?

  Everyone in the room racked their brains. They were all trying to figure out how a formerly healthy teenage girl got so incredibly sick so fast. And that's when Gina's mother finally remembered the bat. She told one of Gina's pediatricians and asked if that could have anything to do with her daughter's strange symptoms. And the doctor immediately went pale, and his eyes got really wide and almost sorrowful. He had to break the terrible news to Gina's parents. Bat bites are the most common way humans are exposed to rabies in the United States. And rabies without immediate treatment is 100% fatal. The only hope for a human bitten

• 5:00Kaelyn Moore?

  by a rabid animal is what is known as post-exposure prophylaxis, which combines vaccinations and other immune treatments. But by the time symptoms appear, it's too late. And Gina was already very, very sick. Doctors transferred the girl to the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin for specialized testing. Rabies antibodies were detected in her cerebrospinal fluid, confirming the diagnosis that everyone dreaded. Gina had rabies. The disease was slowly taking over her brain. And unless they figured something out very quickly, she was going to die.

• 5:40Kaelyn Moore?

  Welcome back to Heart Starts Pounding. As always, I'm your host, Kayla Moore. Maybe it's because there's been a lot of zombie talk lately on TV with The Last of Us, and then in movies with 28 Years Later. But I've been thinking a lot about real-life illnesses that hijack our brains and can turn us into, well, zombies. And today, I want to share with you some of my research. And I'm going to tell you three horrific examples of what I found. And like I say with all of our Morbid Medicine episodes, today is a bad day to be a hypochondriac. Before we jump in, I wanted to give you guys also a very quick heads up that we are going to be launching brand-new Heart Starts Pounding merch in just a couple weeks. I've been wearing the samples I've gotten around

• 6:25Kaelyn Moore?

  House and I am very excited to share these pieces with you guys. There's also going to be, which I'm very excited for, special limited edition Dark Summer merch because starting July 9th, we are launching our second installment of Dark Summer. It may be the most relaxing time of the year, but that doesn't mean there's not something still lurking around every corner. Of course, if you're a patron or an Apple Podcast subscriber, you are going to get discounts on all the merch. So basically the subscription pays for itself. Apple subscribers, stay tuned through the end of this episode for a special message on how to get your discounts and patrons, I'll be posting more details for you on Patreon. So keep an eye out for that. All right, let's get back into it.

• 7:09Kaelyn Moore?

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• 7:52Kaelyn Moore?

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• 8:11Kaelyn Moore?

  So what exactly is rabies and why is it so terrifying? Humans have known rabies exists and is transmitted by animal bites for thousands of years now. There's actually a legal code preserved from almost 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia that includes a reference to people dying after being bitten by mad dogs. There are two ways that this disease Can go. About 15 to 20% of cases are what's called paralytic rabies, meaning the infected person or animal becomes completely unable to move before dying. The other 80 to 85% of cases are the very, very scary kind. They're what's known as furious rabies.

• 8:55Kaelyn Moore?

  Animals with furious rabies compulsively attack and bite anything and everything they can. They're so enraged, nothing can stop them. People have even shot rabid animals just to watch them get up and keep on attacking. They also produce extra saliva, which makes them appear to be foaming at the mouth, or sometimes just drooling a ton. You'll know if you see a creature with furious rabies. Its behavior won't make any sense. Maybe it's a coyote out in the middle of the day, walking like its limbs are locked, foam dripping from its mouth. If you see them, don't go outside. Because if they see you, they may come at you with an almost unstoppable force.

• 9:37Kaelyn Moore?

  When humans get furious rabies, they become uncontrollably angry as well. These people sometimes have to be physically restrained to keep their limbs from flying at doctors. There's actually a video that I found that is very disturbing, from the US Army Medical Service that was put out in 1955. It filmed 29 villagers from a small village in Iran, who were attacked by a rabid wolf. The black and white silent video hopes to educate on the manifestation of the disease. And the results are horrifying. In it, a man has his legs and wrists bound to the bed. His eyes gaze up at the ceiling, but it doesn't really look like anyone's in there.

• 10:21Kaelyn Moore?

  A nurse wipes the foam that keeps forming around the corners of his mouth. It seems like a horrible, horrible experience. And after five days of getting worse, he passes away. But one thing that he does towards the beginning of the video, when his mind and body aren't totally ravaged by the disease, is he goes to take a sip of water. And then, his whole body jerks and he spits it out. What he's experiencing is probably the strangest and eeriest rabies symptom. It's something called hydrophobia. It's the fear of water. When someone with rabies drinks water, or even thinks about drinking water,

• 11:05Kaelyn Moore?

  it triggers a painful throat spasm, so painful that it actually overrides all of the other types of pain that also goes along with rabies. The only thing that the patient can focus on is getting away from the water. They'll choke and gag, even scream and try to hide from the water. It's unlike anything I've ever seen before. And hydrophobia isn't necessarily a universal rabies symptom, so if a rabid animal is coming after you, you can't really count on a bowl of water stopping it dead in its tracks. You should still just try to get away as fast as you can. And really, whatever you have to do to avoid getting rabies, it's worth it. Because rabies deaths are so agonizing and its symptoms are so bizarre, many cultures historically interpreted dying victims' contortions

• 11:49Kaelyn Moore?

  and howls of pain as being demonic. I mean, imagine a priest throwing holy water on someone who is deathly afraid of water. It's going to look like there's a demon inside of that person. In some parts of Thailand, to this day, actually, monks will perform exorcisms on victims of rabies. If someone has been bitten by what they believe is a rabid animal, they perform a ritual where they play dead. And then the monks will hold a mock funeral for this victim, carrying them on a funeral pyre into the town center, where people pretend to weep for their death. Then the monks will light the pyre with matches and the victim must stay on top for as long as possible as the flames grow under them.

• 12:34Kaelyn Moore?

  The pretend cremation is supposed to rid the body of the spirits that caused the rabies in the first place.

• 12:42Kaelyn Moore?

  It wasn't until 1804 that someone actually figured out that it wasn't demons or spirits causing rabies. It was actually saliva. Scientist Georg Gottfried Zinke proved that he could infect healthy animals with rabies by injecting them with the saliva of a rabid animal. And 81 years later, a guy you may have heard of, Louise Pasteur, yes, the same one who came up with the pasteurization of milk, created the very first rabies vaccine by using the spinal Cords of infected rabbits. Pasteur was nervous to offer the vaccine to humans. But then, one night, on July 6th, 1885, a crying mother showed up to his Paris doorstep, holding her nine-year-old son in her arms. His clothes were tattered and streaked with blood after being savagely bitten 14 times

• 13:27Kaelyn Moore?

  by a neighbor's rabid dog. Pasteur's team agreed to vaccinate the boy 12 times over the next 10 days, using progressively larger doses of the virus. It was a dangerous experiment, but what choice did they have? Everyone held their breaths, waiting for the boy to get rabies, but nothing happened. The boy grew up and lived a very healthy life until 1940. And from that moment on, rabies vaccines have been available to both humans and animals, and they've only gotten more effective over time. Unfortunately, for Gina Geezy, the development of vaccines didn't lead to treatments for people who had active rabies. Doctors told Gina's parents that she was almost certainly going to die, maybe even

• 14:11Kaelyn Moore?

  that day. By that point, she was barely conscious. She would occasionally wake up enough to respond to simple commands from her doctors, but she had to be intubated to help her breathe, so she couldn't communicate any longer. Hospice care was one option, either at home or in the hospital. Gina would be given sedatives and painkillers, anything to make her comfortable, but doctors wouldn't try to prevent her from dying. Or she could remain in intensive care. But nobody had ever survived rabies that way. Neither choice offered any real hope, and what were her parents supposed to pick?

• 14:51Kaelyn Moore?

  One doctor, a pediatric infectious disease specialist named Rodney Willoughby Jr., suggested a third option. But it was a brand-new idea, and he was a brand-new member of the medical staff. It was only his second on-call shift, actually, at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. But he had an idea, and he wasn't just going to stand there and watch this girl die. He theorized that rabies patients were dying mostly because- Because their brain activity was being altered by the virus, causing their brains to signal their other organs to overheat and burn themselves out. If he could stop Gina's brain from sending out those bad signals, Dr. Willoughby believed he might be able to buy her immune system enough time to win its battle against rabies.

• 15:37Kaelyn Moore?

  He told Gina's parents that she would probably die no matter which option they chose, but if they requested it, he was at least willing to try and save her. But he would need to put her into an induced coma. Gina's parents decided with no other options that they would try it. Even if Gina died, they thought maybe her short life would help doctors learn something that could later save other patients. So Dr. Willoughby anesthetized Gina until she was comatose. Essentially, she was sleeping in the deepest sleep imaginable, with her brain activity suppressed as much as it possibly could be without killing her. Then they waited, mostly for bad news.

• 16:21Kaelyn Moore?

  Even if Gina didn't die, there was another worst-case scenario, too. She could live, but with locked-in syndrome, where she would be fully conscious, but so completely paralyzed that she would only be able to move her eyes. To everyone's surprise, however, when the anesthesia was withdrawn two weeks later, Gina was still alive, and she wasn't locked in. On the 16th day after her coma was induced, Gina responded to human voices by raising her eyebrows and opening her mouth. By the 23rd day, she could sit up in bed, and by day 30, she cried in response to feelings of sadness. She wasn't just moving, she was thinking and feeling. But Gina was also like a newborn baby again in a 15-year-old's body.

• 17:06Kaelyn Moore?

  She had to relearn everything: how to walk, how to talk, how to smile, how to laugh. And she had to do it all in the spotlight, basically. As the first person to ever survive rabies without a vaccine, Gina became essentially a celebrity patient overnight. Today, Gina is a married mother of three who works at the Fond du Lac Children's Museum. She still has permanent nerve damage and some trouble with her balance, but she is functioning much, much better than anyone ever expected.

• 17:37Kaelyn Moore?

  Back in 2004, when Gina's survival was announced, people assumed her treatment would become the standard of care for symptomatic rabies in humans. It even got a name, the Milwaukee Protocol, and doctors around the world were thrilled to have at least one treatment option that might give people with rabies a fighting chance. But it definitely was not the game changer that everyone had hoped for. Over the next 20 years, a few more people did survive rabies, 33 in total as of now, and that's out of tens of thousands of cases. Some of them did receive the Milwaukee Protocol treatment, others just received intensive care, most were left severely

• 18:19Kaelyn Moore?

  disabled. I will say, though, if you do happen to get bit by a bat, which is how most rabies deaths in the US start, there still might be some good news in the future. In 2024, a team working with the US Defense Department announced that they had developed a possible cure for rabies, at least in mice. These researchers made a monoclonal antibody drug for rabies, and when they tested it in mice, they were able to cure their rabies even after they had symptoms. Obviously, prevention is still the priority. It's way better to get a vaccine than a risky experimental treatment, but this new approach is really promising, and maybe soon we'll be able to say that the original zombie virus has been cured.

• 19:04Kaelyn Moore?

  In 2019, a 14-year-old girl in rural Turkey, who we'll refer to as Nina, noticed a few changes to her personality. First, her parents noticed that she was acting particularly moody. Okay, whatever, she's a 14-year-old girl. Her parents didn't really think much of it. But then she slowly became more and more distracted. It was like she was never fully there when talking to her parents. And then, one day, she stopped communicating with them entirely. Her once-long answers became just one-word responses. Now, none of this is all that weird for teenagers, but it was just so unlike Nina. Sure, she

• 19:47Kaelyn Moore?

  Would have phases where she would be moody, but this phase didn't pass. Actually, it was getting worse and worse. Each day she was becoming more gloomy. She was speaking to her parents less and less. And her parents really started to think of the worst case scenario if she didn't start feeling better soon. So they brought her to a therapist where Nina was eventually diagnosed with clinical depression. What came next were antidepressants. She was prescribed a generic form of Zoloft, but that didn't alleviate her symptoms at all. So next the psychiatrist tried the generic equivalent to Prozac. But Nina still didn't feel any better. Actually, she felt a lot worse. For the next year, Nina's depression just worsened.

• 20:33Kaelyn Moore?

  And then a little over a year after the onset of her symptoms, she developed a very strange symptom. These swellings on her neck. It was her lymph nodes. They were so enlarged, doctors actually thought she probably had cancer. The next step was going to be a complex surgery to remove the diseased nodes. And Nina was referred to a larger state hospital in nearby Manisa, Turkey. Now Nina's new doctors decided to conduct a psychiatric evaluation before the surgery. But Nina was so depressed, she couldn't even pay attention to the doctor's questions. After testing, they ended up putting her in the second most severe category on the depression scale that they were using. And they ordered her to increase her meds and then scheduled the surgery.

• 21:19Kaelyn Moore?

  Two months later, on the surgery date, Nina was still severely depressed and on even a higher dose of her SSRI. Her enlarged lymph nodes were eventually removed, biopsied and sent off for testing. And when the results came back, the surgeons were shocked. Nina didn't have cancer. She had something else entirely. Something that her doctors had only ever read about in their medical journals. Nina tested positive for a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii. It's a single-celled organism called a protozoan. What exactly protozoans are is really complicated, evolutionarily speaking, but the shortest way to describe them is to explain what they're not.

• 22:04Kaelyn Moore?

  They're not animals, plants, or fungi. Not all of them are parasites, but Toxoplasma gondii is. It's also incredibly difficult to treat, especially once a bunch of those single cells group together to form cysts, which are often found in the patient's brain. Toxoplasma gondii has a trait that is incredibly rare among parasites. It can completely change the host's behavior. It's like it hijacks their brain. For instance, when rats and mice are infected, they usually become less afraid of cats. Sometimes infected rodents actually appear to be attracted to cats. And that's because cats are actually the parasite's favorite host,

• 22:48Kaelyn Moore?

  because Toxoplasma gondii can only reproduce sexually when it's infecting a cat. And somehow, the protozoans inside of rat brains know that they need to be inside of a cat to reproduce. So they force the rat that they're infecting to go get eaten by a cat. The most common way that adult humans get infected is actually by eating undercooked meat. It's not necessarily from cats, especially beef and pork. In France and Brazil, where raw or partially raw beef is considered a delicacy, toxoplasmosis infections are much more common than in countries that typically cook meat thoroughly. Research is still ongoing to figure out whether or not toxoplasmosis increases risk-taking behavior in humans, like it does in rats.

• 23:34Kaelyn Moore?

  But a lot of scientists think that it's possible. Several human studies have linked the parasite to schizophrenia, as well as other mental illnesses and depression, and even the likelihood of auto accidents, strangely enough. Obviously, it's unethical to infect humans with toxoplasmosis on purpose and illegal to do so just to cut open their brains and look for cysts later. So it's probably going to take a long time to figure out for certain how toxoplasmosis affects human behavior.

• 24:03Kaelyn Moore?

  But one thing we do know is what happened to our young patient Nina. The hospital wrote her a prescription for a drug called clindamycin. Doctors hoped that the medication would shrink her remaining swollen lymph nodes and keep the swelling from coming back. And they were shocked when, at her follow-up exam, Nina not only had less swelling, she had a whole new personality. She was cheerful and happy like she once was. And once they did another psychiatric evaluation, they learned that her depression levels had plummeted. Now, listen, I'm not saying that if you're depressed and love cats, that you have a personality-altering parasite inside of you. But I guess I'm not saying that you don't either.

• 24:48Kaelyn Moore?

  More after the break.

• 24:53Kaelyn Moore?

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• 25:36Kaelyn Moore?

  It's also a really thoughtful gift if you know someone who's been wanting to clean up their routine. Use code HSP to get 15% off your Primally Pure purchase. That's www.p r i m a l l y p u r e dot com and use code HSP at checkout for 15% off your order.

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• 26:53Kaelyn Moore?

  This episode is brought to you by SiJoo. A new season always makes me want to reset things. My space, my routine, how my mornings feel. And honestly, upgrading my bedding has made a big difference. And that's why I have been loving SiJoo Home. I have the Aerie Weight Eucalyptus Sheets from SiJoo. They have a lightweight feel, cool to the touch texture. And now my bed feels like a real reset at the end of a long day. I know that every little bit of improvement I can do with my sleep routine makes a huge difference. And so I'm so happy I was able to get SiJoo Sheets. The Aerie Weight Sheets are made with PennCell Lyocell. They're doctor recommended, Ecotec certified, and even HSA and FSA eligible, which I genuinely did not know was a thing for bedding. And if you're someone who prefers a more lived-in texture,

• 27:37Kaelyn Moore?

  their Lux Weave French Linen Sheets are stone washed and get softer with every wash. Really beautiful for a bedroom refresh. Go to sijohome.com and use code HSP to get 20% off your first order. That's S I J O H O M E dot com and use code HSP for 20% off at checkout.

• 27:56Kaelyn Moore?

  In Fort Collins, Colorado in 1967, Gene Schoonfeld, a Colorado State University researcher, was studying how to help mule deer avoid starvation under harsh winter conditions. He sent a team to capture a few wild deer and bring them to the university. They temporarily housed the new deer with the sheep being used in other research, and the animals didn't seem to mind each other's company, and they had similar dietary needs. Once the deer got pens of their own, Gene separated them into a few groups and tried various methods of supplementing them throughout the winter. But he noticed quickly that the deer were experiencing some strange symptoms. Like, they just kept losing weight, no matter how much he fed them.

• 28:41Kaelyn Moore?

  The more they ate, the skinnier they got. Pretty soon, some of them looked like walking skeletons. And weight loss wasn't the only problem. Their behavior completely changed. They became clumsy, walking aimlessly and repeating patterns. Their eyes seemed to glaze over, and their coats became rough and matted. They lumbered stiffly across their pens, walking into each other as if they couldn't tell who or what was in their path. Some of them started drooling uncontrollably. A few of them even became aggressive and charged at the researchers. These emaciated bucks with their antlers lowered and a vacant, glassy look in their eyes.

• 29:25Kaelyn Moore?

  They described it almost like being chased by a dead body. Gene tried everything. He tried changing their diet. He tried medicating them for infections. He tested them for every disease he could think of, but every test came back clean. They didn't seem to have parasites, bacterial infections, or a virus. Their food wasn't poisoned. The soil wasn't contaminated. And yet, the deer just kept starving to death with huge piles of food right in front of them. Almost every deer captured and brought to the facility eventually got sick. From the moment they arrived at CSU, they were dead deer walking, and nobody could figure out why. If he was a superstitious man,

• 30:10Kaelyn Moore?

  Gene might have wondered if CSU's deer pens were cursed.

• 30:16Kaelyn Moore?

  The mysterious illnesses and deaths were still happening 10 years later, when finally, a graduate student named Beth Williams decided to look into it a bit more. Research into the sickly deer had largely gone dormant. Maybe they did just start to assume they were cursed. Gene and his colleagues had already investigated dozens of possibilities, and they didn't learn anything useful. But Beth had a new idea. She decided to take a look at the brains of some of the deer that had died from this mystery condition. And what she saw was frightening. When Beth sliced off a thin piece of brain tissue and looked at it under the microscope, it was full of holes, just like a sponge. Something was literally eating away at the deer's brains over time.

• 31:02Kaelyn Moore?

  But what? The brains didn't show any signs of parasites or infection. But Beth realized she had actually seen something just like this before. The university was also researching this really perplexing disease that was starting to affect sheep and goats. They called it "scrapey" because the infected animals tended to obsessively scrape their sides against fences, down to the bone. And just like the sick deer, they also became very uncoordinated, and they lost weight in the late stages of the disease. And when their brains were examined after death, they also had tiny holes all over them. Early experiments had shown that only sheep and goats could get scrapey.

• 31:45Kaelyn Moore?

  But still, there was that brief period at the beginning of Gene's deer study when the deer were housed with the sheep. So some of those sheep were part of CSU's scrapey study. Could the disease have jumped to a new species for the first time, right on the grounds of the university? It was maybe possible, but that didn't give Beth a lot of hope for the deer who were infected. Because scrapey is 100% fatal, and there's no way to treat or prevent it. Even after studying multiple generations of sheep, researchers still didn't know what caused the disease. And just like the skinny deer, scrapey sheep seemed to get sick for absolutely no reason at all.

• 32:28Kaelyn Moore?

  Beth eventually started sharing her findings with other researchers and the condition she discovered was finally given a name: chronic wasting disease. It's often called, by its nickname, zombie deer disease, because animals in later stages of the illness really do look like reanimated corpses. Some people hoped that chronic wasting disease would just go away as the herd at CSU died off, but that didn't happen. The deer kept getting infected. Even when there were no infected deer left in the pens, the next batch of deer brought in would all get infected. And then, in 1981, chronic wasting disease was confirmed in wild deer for the first time.

• 33:11Kaelyn Moore?

  Once it got into wild populations, it started spreading to commercial game farms and even zoos. It was like wildfire. Animal keepers soon learned that once chronic wasting disease had infected a facility, it was literally impossible to decontaminate. Researchers would bleach the entire facility, and deer kept becoming undead. They would use ultraviolet radiation, but the same thing would happen. Even removing and replacing the soil didn't work. Once the disease got a foothold in the place, every deer ever kept there in the future would be exposed. And every deer that gets infected will slowly waste away, becoming more and more uncoordinated and corpse-like until it dies.

• 33:56Kaelyn Moore?

  It took decades after Beth's initial discovery for scientists to figure out what causes chronic wasting disease, scrapie, and other similar diseases that leave holes in the victim's brain. And it's actually something that can happen to humans as well. It's these misshapen proteins called prions. So, a lot of our bodily functions depend on proteins. For example, if you hug someone you love, that can cause your brain to release oxytocin, a neurotransmitter associated with bonding. That chemical reaction is only possible because of these special proteins that your brain processes to create oxytocin. So without proteins, you couldn't feel a lot of your emotions, including love. But sometimes those microscopic proteins get folded the wrong way.

• 34:41Kaelyn Moore?

  And instead of carrying a message that tells your brain to function correctly or feel love, misfolded proteins destroy brain cells. Worse yet, they convince other proteins to fold themselves improperly, too. It's kind of like how cancer cells convince the body to produce more cancer cells and viruses feed on your cells to replicate themselves. The difference is, your immune system has ways to respond to cancer and viruses, which means we can develop drugs that help your body kill those pathogens. But the immune system doesn't have any way to recognize proteins as a threat, no matter how they're shaped. That means vaccines, medicine, all that stuff is not an option.

• 35:24Kaelyn Moore?

  Any drug we could give a person or animal to kill the misshapen prions in their body would also destroy the healthy proteins, too, and that would eventually kill the patient. So not only is it impossible to get rid of prions inside of the body, they're functionally immortal outside of it, too. There's no way to sterilize something that's been exposed to prions. If disease-causing prions get on a surgical tool, for instance, they're there forever. In other words, we have no way to contain or manage prion diseases, short of killing every exposed animal. And bad news for everyone: chronic wasting disease is spreading.

• 36:07Kaelyn Moore?

  After first being detected in just one herd in one state, chronic wasting disease is now present in 36 states and five Canadian provinces. Which raises a very big question: can humans get it? Well, in 2024, two elderly hunters from the same lodge started coming down with very strange symptoms after they ate deer from a chronic wasting disease-infected area. Symptoms that honestly mimicked the disease. They had poor memory and coordination, sudden jerky movements and trouble speaking. And both men eventually died from a human prion disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob's disease.

• 36:50Kaelyn Moore?

  Creutzfeldt-Jakob isn't the same thing as chronic wasting disease, but it is what chronic wasting disease would theoretically cause in humans if it ever crossed the species barrier. When the news broke about the hunters, people started panicking immediately, as you can imagine. It was on every news site. There were countless YouTube videos talking about it. Hunters were terrified and stopped hunting. This was literally their worst-case scenario: a 100% fatal disease with no test, no treatment, no cure, spreading like wildfire among deer and elk. Some people swore off eating venison entirely. They wanted to know, what was their risk of getting this? Could you or I start wasting away and losing our minds from this

• 37:35Kaelyn Moore?

  deer disease? Well, it turns out, the answer is probably no. Creutzfeldt-Jakob's disease can occur spontaneously in humans, mostly in people over 60 years old, which both hunters were. There wasn't any proof that either of the hunters ate a deer infected with chronic wasting disease. They had just hunted in areas where the disease was common. So, great news. Humans probably can't get chronic wasting disease, although you probably still shouldn't eat a sick deer's brain. However, even though you might be safe from chronic wasting disease for now, I can't tell you to not worry about prions at all, because there is one known

• 38:17Kaelyn Moore?

  prion disease that humans can get from animals: bovine spongiform encephalopathy, aka mad cow disease. During an outbreak in the United Kingdom in the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of British beef consumers were potentially exposed. And since then, at least 232 people have died as a direct result of eating the infected beef. There will probably be more deaths, even if nobody ever eats mad cow again. Scientists believe that some people still have prions from the outbreak incubating in their bodies, which will eventually turn into Creutzfeldt-Jakob's disease. There's no way to predict when, though. But once they do get sick, they will die.

• 39:02Kaelyn Moore?

  Today, I set out to make an episode to try to make myself feel better about these types of illnesses. There's no way that you or I could ever come down with any of these, right? But then I really thought about it. If there ever were someone to own a cat, to frolic in the forest amongst the deer, and to not be afraid to venture into a dark bat cave, it's definitely one of us here in the Rogue Detecting Society. These are all things that we like to do. But what do you guys think? Have you ever known anyone who's come into contact with any of these illnesses? Please let me know. Wherever you listen, drop a comment wherever that is, and be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show. All of that engagement really helps a show like this, and your support

• 39:43Kaelyn Moore?

  is everything to me. That's all I have for you today, though. Go pet your cats for me. I'm sure you'll be fine. And meet me here next week. Until next time, stay parasite free and stay curious.

• 40:02Kaelyn Moore?

  Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by Kaelyn Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Amanda Olson is our associate producer. Additional research and writing by Yelena War. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstarts pounding.com.

• 40:25Kaelyn Moore?

  This episode is brought to you by our partner, Vistaprint. If you run a small business, you know that there's a moment where you go from just doing the thing you love to realizing you need stuff, like physical stuff. Custom merch for an event, branded apparel for your team, business cards that actually look professional. That was definitely me with Heart Starts Pounding. What started as a podcast I made in my closet turned into something that had merch, had mugs, had stickers, had all of this stuff that I needed to get made. And Vistaprint made it so much less overwhelming. They are a true print expert. Premium quality products, fast turnaround, and design tools that actually make sense. I actually got custom mugs made from Vistaprint, and they are gorgeous and very, very good quality. The quality feels expensive without having an expensive price tag. There's a

• 41:10Kaelyn Moore?

  reason over seven 20 million businesses trust Vistaprint with their print needs. Vistaprint, print your possible. Right now, new customers get 20% off with code NEW20 at Vistaprint.com. That's 20% off at Vistaprint.com using code NEW20. Do you want more Darkly Curious stories in your life? Sign up for our Patreon for free and get access to a rotating shelf of bonus content, our weekly Rogue Detecting Society newsletter, and the HSP Book Club. Paid members also get monthly bonus episodes and archive access, which I think is more than 40 episodes at this point. You also get a cool jinx sticker after your first three months. And you can check it all out with a free seven-day trial. Link in the bio or go to patreon.com backslash heartstartspounding. Well, whatever you do, stay curious.