Hunters' dilemma: Fear of disease prompts some to give up eating wild game, other meats
Bozeman Daily Chronicle
09/29/02
By KAYLEY MENDENHALL Chronicle Staff Writer
Steve Barker doesn't hunt anymore.
And he's stopped feeding his family game meat, hamburger, hot dogs and sausages.
The Bozeman resident was friends with Gary Padgham, a local fly-fishing guide who recently died of Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, a brain-wasting disorder that resembles chronic wasting disease in elk and deer or "mad cow" disease in cattle.
The idea of a possible connection between chronic wasting disease and Creutzfeldt-Jacob has been kicked around for years, but health officials stress that there is no scientific evidence to prove the disease is transmissible between animals and humans.
Neverthless, many of Padgham's friends adamantly believe his death was directly related to eating tainted meat.
"We don't have evidence of certain things that people are alleging," Barker said. "We also don't have evidence that it's not true."
So Barker isn't taking any chances. And he's not alone.
"Anything that is a multi-source meat product we're not eating," he said. "How can we be sure they aren't getting brain tissues mixed in with the hamburgers?"
Questions without answers
Gary Padgham didn't hunt.
But as a fishing guide, the 50-year-old had many friends who shot elk and deer and would often give him meat, said Lynda Jandt, Padgham's long-time significant other and mother of his child.
He typically served elk meat to his clients on fishing trips to give them a true Montana experience. Joseph Stevens, who grew up with Padgham in Monterey, Calif., went on a five-day fishing trip on the Smith River with him two years ago. Elk was served for dinner on that trip.
"It was good to see him growing up and following his dream and living the outfitter life," Stevens, now of Missoula, said. "I did recall that one night he fed everybody elk. I can't remember if I ate it or not."
Stevens believes health officials should be tracking down Padgham's clients to let them know about the situation and to see if any others have gotten sick.
And Jandt still has a freezer full of game meat she won't eat. But she's keeping it just in case health officials want to test it. So far, no one is taking that approach.
Results of Padgham's autopsy are not yet available, so a concrete diagnosis on what caused his death has not been made.
But even if it is found he died of Creutzfeldt-Jacob, state health officials say they can't be certain he contracted it from eating tainted meat.
Furthermore, since Creutzfeldt-Jacob is thought to have an incubation period of anywhere from 15 months to 30 years, it would be nearly impossible to track the disease to a particular food source, said Jim Murphy, a spokesman for the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services.
"From what we know about incubation periods, if (Padgham's death) was even related to consumption, how would we know it was something that he ate currently?" Murphy said. "(Testing is) expensive. It's time consuming. When you don't know what the diagnosis is, what do you test for?"
For now, the state health department is not treating Padgham's death as a public health concern. Besides, it has no budget to specifically deal with Creutzfeldt-Jacob. The disease is known to kill one person in Montana every few years, so Padgham's death is not automatically considered out of the norm.
"We kind of have to wait and see what the diagnosis is," Murphy said. "We'll be in consultation with the (Centers for Disease Control) to see if they think this is an unusual event. If there is anything indicating it is unusual, it will get more attention."
A host of diseases
Creutzfeldt-Jacob is one of a family of "transmissible spongiform encephalapathies." These diseases are caused by prions, or malformed brain proteins. Prions stack up in the nervous system over time and poke holes in the brain tissue of infected animals.
About one out of 1 million people die from Creutzfeldt-Jacob every year around the world. Humans can get the disease through transplants of infected tissues, genetics or by ingestion of tainted beef. Or sometimes the disease shows up sporadically for no know reason.
The lead scientist doing research into all "prion diseases," Dr. Stanley B. Prusiner, works in the neurology department at the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center. The scientists in his lab are doing the autopsy on Padgham, according to the Associated Press.
The autopsy involves looking at brain tissue on a microscopic slide, paying specific attention to the pattern of holes to determine which form of Creutzfeldt-Jacob killed the patient, said Jennifer O'Brien, a UCSF spokeswoman.
The pattern of holes specific to the sporadic form of Creutzfeldt-Jacob looks different from the variant form that killed dozens of people in Europe during the "mad cow" epidemic, O'Brien explained.
"If it's found that chronic wasting disease can be transmitted to humans, we don't know what the brain pattern would look like," she said. "The reason we don't know is because it has apparently never happened."
A national concern
The wait-and-see approach is not aggressive enough for Padgham's friends and family.
"I don't want to alarm people, I don't want to panic them, but we have many more questions than we have answers," Barker said. "We have to figure out a way to buy time and find funds for the scientists to understand this -- which is a lot easier said than done."
When chronic wasting was discovered in the wild in Wisconsin this year, state officials took an aggressive approach to dealing with the problem. They plan to test brain tissues from 40,000 to 50,000 of the deer killed by hunters this year.
Closer to home, chronic wasting has been identified in Colorado and Wyoming for about 20 years, which makes it hard to believe it hasn't traveled into Montana, Barker said.
It did show up at a Phillipsburg game farm in the late 1990s, said Ron Aasheim, of the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks department. But, of the 1,700 animals tested since then, no cases have been discovered in Montana's wild animals.
Wildlife officials will continue testing some animals killed across the state, but Aasheim said specific sites have not yet been determined.
"I know it's probably frustrating and little bit unnerving for some people," he said. "But since we haven't had the disease, we feel fortunate so far. We're doing what we think we need to do."
The FWP has not received any extra funding to test for chronic wasting disease, although Aasheim said he assumes the issue will be discussed in the next Legislative session because of political pressure nationwide.
"I respect those people's concerns. But you've read what the experts say about the potential for that disease to even be related," he said. "It's amazing to me the amount of energy people spend on this when their chances of getting hit by a truck are a lot better."