The Gruesome Tale of the Laughing Death Epidemic
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- Опубліковано 17 сер 2021
- A true medical mystery. You'll really want to sink your teeth into this one.
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Sources:
Alpers, Michael, The Epidemiology of Kuru in the Period 1987 to 1995, Australian Government Department of Health, December 31, 2005, www1.health.gov.au/internet/m...
Weiler. Nicholas, Alzheimer’s Disease is a ‘Double-Prion Disorder’, Study Shows, University of California San Fransisco, May 1, 2019, www.ucsf.edu/news/2019/05/414...
Stanley B. Prusiner - Facts, The Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine 1997, www.nobelprize.org/prizes/med...
Press Release: Baruch S. Blumberg and D. Carleton Gajdusek, Karolinska Institutet, October 14, 1976, www.nobelprize.org/prizes/med...
Kelleher, Colm, Brain Trust: the Hidden Connection Between Mad Cow and Misdiagnosed Alzheimer’s Disease, Paraview Piocket Books, New York, 2004, books.google.ca/books?id=AGAh...
Lindenbaum, Shirley, An Annotated History of Kuru, April 14, 2015, journals.ed.ac.uk/index.php/ma...
Kompoliti, K & Ferguson-Smith, M, Kuru (Disease), ScienceDirect, www.sciencedirect.com/topics/...
Liberski, Pawel et al, Kuru, the First Human Prion Disease, Viruses, March 2019, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
Brain Disease ‘Resistance Gene” Evolves in Papua New Guinea Community; Could Offer Insights into CJD, Science Daily, November 21, 2009, www.sciencedaily.com/releases...
Liberski, P & Brown, P, Kuru: Its Ramifications After Fifty Years, Experimental Gerontology, 2008, hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-...
Bichell, Rae, When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged, NPR, September 6, 2016, www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/...
Rudan, Igor, The Laughing Death, / the-laughing-death
Lagnado, John, From Pabulum to Prions (via DNA): a Tale of Two Griffiths, Past Times, watermark.silverchair.com/bio...
Simon's Script: "Cannibalism is rarely a good idea."
UA-cam Subtitle: "Cannibalism is really a good idea."
Well I guess we know where YT stands on this issue.
I had to go back to see that!
yum!
and yet god forbid you include 3 seconds of a non-royalty-free song into a video. but cannibalism- encouraged!
It sure is - as long the offal and other leftovers are only used to feed fish in fish farms.. Waste Not, Want Not... RIP Y'all!
Yep, someone needs to work on their subtitle skill...
"Kuru is a great reason not to commit cannibalism."
Well for me, it was murder charges.
Well to be fair the people consumed were already dead.
I mean you don't technically have to kill someone to eat a dead body..
Idfk man like, if someone dies completely out of your hands and then you eat them is it a crime? Or just icky and questionably amoral
@@tdogg6117 i think it’s considered as defacing (idk if that’s the correct word i forget) a dead body, which is illegal. but there are cases in asia of people finding meat in bags on the street, cooking it thinking it’s beef, and later on it’s proven to be a murder victim
The OG you laugh you lose
Besides this joke, that plague was pretty terrible
I raff I ruse?
Welcome to Zeducation!
@@josephwilliams7995 good morning, Sunday morning
This is underrated which means it went over a lot of heads. You win
Hearing the symptoms reminded me of Mad Cow Disease. Didn't have to wait long for that to be mentioned.
I've heard this story before but had no idea they bury the dead first. Really wish hadn't started eating just as Simon described that part 😵
Oh same, just started having breakfast. Promptly stopped having breakfast.
I had finished eating an hour ago and now I’m nauseous
It's just pink kimchi
I was in the middle of supper. Even birds don't eat maggots when they're swarming over a carcass. I always figured they're toxic.
Yeah, it put me right off my bowl of maggots
This is why we rely on Simon for our brain food.
Eyooo, also where da new podcast episodes at!
Ba da dum dum tish!
Prions are terrifying.
I swear that very first line of the video, I heard as "The Simpsons were gradual, but inexorable" and was wondering what kind of parallel you were about to draw 😂
I lived in a neighboring area in the Eastern Highlands. If you ask an old-timer if they were cannibals, they would point to the next people group over and say "it wasn't us, it was them." Then, you verify with the people group they pointed at, and those people point right back at the first group you asked, and say "it wasn't us, it was them."
🧐 How “surprising”…
Remember when I first heard about prions and my mind was totally blown at how an apparently inert protein, so tiny could do so much damage. Also raised alarm when I found chronic wasting in deer was a prion and yet hunters were eating the meat... a week after a friend had given us homemade deer jerk which was deliciously enjoyed.
Making jerky would probably kill most of the things living in the meat
@@executioner_ecgbert884 prions are living,not killed by cooking or drying. Hopefully eating it once in life is not a problem
Bit thanks for trying to comfort
Most states that have this disease require the deer to be inspected. Prions are not killed by boiling, cooking, etc. so the food would have to be burned.
I can only hope your mate didn't kill a sick deer and jerk it.
The chances are slim though. Assuming your american, your nation has never had a case. And it's likely to stay that way if you avoid sick deer and/or avoid the brain and spine. That's my understanding of it at least.
Not supposed to affect humans. If you believe the government (aka folks selling tags and taxing gear).
I was a child when mad cows disease hit, I remember the smell of disinfectant and sight of flames on hills.
Sounds like something from Blade Runner.
But at least you recovered.
@@vijaysura2874 it differently left an impact
I remember when mad cow disease came out too. All the talk about that issue at the time and I never heard about the prions or kuru or any of this stuff.
Just goes to show how we can say so much and convey so little.
In 2017, I lost a friend to the inherited form of CJD. She had been tested due to her Father having it, so she knew it was coming, but not when. She lived 18 months once she exhibited symptoms. It’s a horrific way to die. She was 47, beautiful and so very loved by her husband. He cared for her until the end.
I knew it was prions from the first couple of minutes but still got chills. It's weird how with pathogens, the less alive they are, the more terrifying what they cause is...
Because of “mad cow disease” I still can’t give blood in the US. I was stationed in Germany and the American Red Cross won’t accept blood products from service members who were there during that time frame. The military bought meat products from several vendors from across Europe, including Great Britain.
glad to hear they keep track of it abit at least
Comedians be like, _"That's where I'm gonna start my career."_ 😁
On a side note though, I thought the _Dancing plague_ that took over France in 1518 was bizarre enough. But here comes _Kuru._ 😔
I think the dancing plague is still worse as we still have no concrete evidence as to what happened to the victims. At least we understand what happened with kuru.
Edit to say, that's just my opinion anyway. Kuru is horrific and not "better" in anyway.
I went to the Kontiki Museum in Oslo. I had a girlfriend in Drammen. She was to die for. She took me to Geilo and bought me a 'Hilsen fra Lampeland' troll!
@@vijaysura2874 And where is she now? You let her slip away like salmon?
@@oslonorway547 Ahh the old salmon-slip, classic norwegian girl breakup technique.
I noticed the same connection. It makes me think prions might also explain that historical event as well.
Who would have thought that burying a maggot infested body for days at a time, then digging it up and eating it might be a bad idea?
Further, who would have thought funny shaped proteins would be the biggest issue with this 😂
You know what, I studied CJD at university as part of my biochemistry degree but never knew that prion was a contraction. Prions are extremely scary things with no cure. They think there are still lots of people who will suffer from CJD in the UK.
My great uncle passed away from CJD last year. He lived in North Carolina.
I question if a neighbor had this last Saturday, or if the incessant laughing for hours on end was because they thought throwing up on my patio umbrella was oh-so hilarious?
It depends on the context.
The whole neighbourhood gets together just to throw up on your lawn furniture. Next we'll get your decking
@@americantopteam135s-t7 they're in cahoots with the pigeons too, I feel so targeted😫
Ugh 😒. You have my deepest sympathies.
Possibly certain substances were involved ?
There is an Italian family that develope fatal insomnia in their later years and there was a history of canabalism in their family.
I remember watching a documentary on this, I think it is on UA-cam, about this in my epigenetic class. Prions certainly open up some exciting avenues on how to understand neurodegenerative diseases (my current research) with studies suggesting proteins such as B-amyloid and tau in Alzheimer’s, alpha synuclein in Parkinson’s, and TDP-43 in ALS and FTLD have prion-like properties.
I wonder if the genetic defense evolved here might offer another avenue of exploration in finding a cure for Alzheimer's and other senescent dementias? One can but hope.
What makes this more complicated is that some of these degenerative diseases are also genetic. I know that diseases like Kuru and vCJD are acquired but diseases like Fatal Familial Insomnia and ALS are genetic.
@@KathrynSrce3719 Not all of ALS cases are genetic. Only about 5-10% of all ALS cases are from familial mutations. There are several genes that can be responsible for the disease. The rest are sporadic. 97% of all ALS cases involve cytoplasmic hypophosphorylated TDP-43 aggregates. There are other cases where it doesn’t involve TDP-43 but SOD1 (first mutation of ALS found in 1993). It wasn’t until 2006 when TDP-43 was identified as a major pathological protein and in 2008 it was found that mutations on the TDP-43 gene were responsible for cases of familial ALS (my boss was among the first people to find these mutations).
@@matthewdopler8997 That's scary stuff. So that means anyone could develop it then. What about Alzheimer's? Is that sporadic or more genetic? And is it true that learning more languages helps to reduce the risk of developing it?
@@KathrynSrce3719 Alzheimer’s is mostly sporadic but there are genetic risk factors. I don’t know all of them but APOE4 is one that is talked about a lot. I don’t know necessarily knowing more languages reduces your chances but I do know that they are looking at education level in terms of demographics. It is advised to keep your mind active and exercise.
Simon: “The cause of Kuru is…”
UA-cam: “Right now is a fine time for an ad break.”
Same!
It y’all don’t stop playing and get Premium! I haven’t seen an ad in God knows how long! 😅
@@love_ricaxoxo2887 bold to assume everyone actually has money
@@love_ricaxoxo2887not everyone is able to pay for that
What a funny way to die... and then become your own dinner theatre...
Bu-dum-tss.
Subtitles : "Curry, the first human priondesease..."
Ok, well this isn't the AI subtitles, is it?
So for once the "eating the body makes you weak" was actually true.
🤔So the film “Ravenous” got it wrong?
Well, no. Eating the body didn’t do anything. It was eating the brain that caused the disorder. As far as we know prion diseases can only be contracted by consuming or injecting brain tissue
That was a lot more informative than I expected. If dementia is caused by a protein then perhaps some kind of immunity can be engineered.
Yes, it was informative. I have never heard of the possibility that a prion could be the cause of Alzheimer's disease, or that the Fore people have genetic mutation that protects them from kuru.
However, I have heard of a competing explanation for Alzheimer's disease - that it is the result of insulin resistance due to carbohydrate-heavy diets. I have heard it nicknamed "type 3 diabetes".
Took me forever to find, but it appears that the US has banned SRM (Specific Risk Materials), such as brain and spinal tissue, from all foods, including farm and pet feeds, as of 2009, in an expansion of original policies.
Sensible, given the prevalence of BSE in the US and Canada. It's nowhere near the levels Britain copped in the 90's but bad enough.
Unfortunately, the penalties for doing so aren't prohibitive and only get levied when violators are caught. Lack of actual oversight in food safety is frightening.
I'm currently reading "Cold Plague" by Daniel Kalla, which deals specifically with prion infections and starts out resembling vCJD or mad cow disease. I'm only a couple of chapters in, but it's fascinating. Thanks for helping me do a bit of concurrent background research!
Cannibalism is never a laughing matter... except in Papua New Guinea...
Cannabalism comes from
Cahen y Baal, the Priests of Baal.
Carnival, likewise.
Well _I_ thought it was funny...
Funny shit.
@@vijaysura2874 That's not where the word comes from.
"Etymology: 16th Century: from Spanish Canibales, name used by Columbus to designate the Caribs of Cuba and Haiti, from Arawak caniba, variant of Carib"
www.wordreference.com/definition/cannibal
From mega projects, brain blaze, and now back to the OG channel. Getting that good Whistler branded dose of legendary today
I'm on the same tour.
Today I found out that this is NOT the video to watch at mealtime.
If it's true that Alzheimer's is a prion disease then the key to a cure could be in the prion disease protection gene in the people of New Guinea.
Well, you'd need to introduce a gene mutation that results in the original protein being shaped differently. Different in that it still functions as it did originally, but is "immune" to the prion variant.
I hadn't heard that Alzheimer's is a prion disease.
@@ruthbaker5281 It's similar in that respect to BSE and CJD.
trouble with that is the same with people immune to HIV we can give the gene to babys making them immune but it comes at a cost of higher schizophrenia ........ like alot higher. kinda the same idea with this anytime we add a protection outside of it happening naturally we end up adding alot of nasty stuff by mistake. hopfully soon we have the tech to bridge that gap and get rid of the bad side effects
Alzheimer's is not a prion disease. There's no evidence that the aggregates or plaques associated with Alzheimer's can be transmitted from human to human. Both prion diseases and Alzheimer's can lead to dementia though.
All I heard was “don’t eat brains.” Everything else is fine ;)
TBH I'd like to try human meat. But it would have to be fresh and I wouldn't wanna eat any of the organs, just the muscle tissue. I'll almost any food once and I'm curious. But yeah, it would have to be prepared under sanitary conditions and I wouldn't wanna eat someone who was unhealthy.
@@glenngriffon8032 So you'd probably want to be eating a child then?
@@Aconitum_napellus just because I enjoy a sirloin steak don't mean I'd eat veal.
Just because I'm open to the idea of eating human don't mean I'd eat a kid or that I'd murder to eat human meat.
I like hamburgers, that doesn't mean I'd be okay with killing a cow, butchering it myself and feeding its meat into a grinder... Mostly cause I know bug all about how to do it.
Try stick to large muscle parts, you don't want nerve tissue either.
Leave the brains to the zombies.
Makes me think of Monty Python's deadliest joke in the world sketch ha
That's amazing that they developed a gene against prion infection. I wonder if that could someday be used to prevent these types of diseases in other people.
Well since it's a gene you'd have to either genetically engineer an unrelated person into having it, or be descended from someone with the gene, so it's not really all that helpful to the rest of us. Great for them though
Very interesting thankyou Simon
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does this taste funny to you?"
GET OUT!!…
I vaguely remember when the mystery was solved when I was 11 or 12 years old. Oh, the bad dreams I had! Kids can take a horrible fact and run with it. 😉
This has to be one of my fav video yet! Human evolution with almost revolutionary speed! Loving it!
Fascinating and unfortunate all at the same time.
This has been a fascinating set of events and facts being unveiled like a well told story, thanks so much for sharing this!!
That was fascinating. TIFO videos are priceless.
Turns out that Tasha's hideous laughter is real.
I love that there was someone nerdy enough here to make this joke
Yeah! D&D comment!
I only got it because of the MTG crossover
O.G.D.&D. 🤘🤓👍
when nature laughs at you
hey at least it doesn't turn the victims into zombies.
Good video 👍
As soon as Simon listed the symptoms... me: it's those creepy prions isn't it?
jesus christ i started watching some of simon's videos starting with the casual criminalist mostly and i feel like i find another channel of his everyday, like. dude what the fuck. he's like the disney of informational youtube channels
One of your best productions. Including pronunciations.
8:40 to be more exact, it is believed that the individual developed CJD. Weirdly enough, prion infections depend more on the source of the prion and less on the particular disease they caused on their previous host.
Very interesting!👍
This prion stuff is fascinating and terrifying. Read other day about prion research accidents and I'd be more intimidated holding a syringe of that stuff than Ebola.
My parents are a little phobic about me working with transgenic mice that have TDP-43 proteinopathy which has studies that suggest it has prion like properties. These mice typically die after a month after we turn the gene on (the mice are designed to have their mutant gene controlled through a special diet). Fortunately there are no reported cases of people being infected by mouse models.
Heard about 2 research cases of vCJD in France I believe.
One remembered a needle prick, and had lived for years wondering if they would go symptomatic.
@@NullHand
Terrifying…
AM I RIGHT PETER?!?!
And I thought I was laughing to death when my friend convinced me to take LSD at Lollapalooza 2 years ago. Not even close, apparently
No, you were right
You survived Lollapalooza on LSD. That deserves a medal 🏅
Is that like a joint?
Putting the Lol back in Lollapalooza.
If you ever think you're overdosing again, you must source heroin and cocaine. Take this concoction together and you'll almost definitely forget about your former overdose status
hey Simon would you make a video about anxiety disorder ?
Thank you
Once you started listing the symptoms, I knew exactly what you were taking about.
your beard game is on point 🤙
And CWD for deer (mule, white tail, and reindeer known so far). There is even a squirrel variant that killed a man in Alabama a few years ago. He had a thing for squirrel brains. yuck
Just when i think I’m subbed to all of your channels..i find another 😂
I wasn't expecting to hear about Kuru in this, Dead Island flashbacks
This is fascinating. Thanks for the research.
Wow, so Dead Island wasn't total BS. Kuru was a legit disease.
Moral of the story: don't eat people, don't eat brains, and DEFINITELY don't eat people brains.
"something less exotic| Ha! Good one Simon.
I actually knew this! Strangely enough the disease and it's cause were covered in 'Dream Park' a book published in 1981 by Larry Niven & Steven Barnes. How cool is that?
So cool
A comedians nightmare
I hope that one day they determine the latency period for CJS, or devise a test for it, so I can once again donate blood.
Laughter is the best medicine, so technically.....
Just imagine in an alternative universe there might be a beardless Simon Whistler with a full head of hair.
bob ross hair
**eats decaying corpse and brains
***Gets horribly sick and dies
-must be angry spirits..
And they still ate the brains of the sick?! Wtf..
@5:51 I thought collaborator Joe Gibbs was a chimpanzee for a second there
The same thing is affecting cervids (deer, etc.) here in United States. It's called CWD or Chronic Wasting Disease, and I think it can be found in most States now. An interesting but little discussed trait of the prions responsible for the spongiform encephalopathy is that as deer eat plants (grass, your vegetables, fruit trees, etc. the infected deer's saliva transfers prions to the plant, where they happily persist, and other deer (or you) later eat it. Thankfully, in humans it usually takes YEARS for the prions to have caused damage sufficient to be noticeable. Now, you might think that cooking will destroy the prions, and you'd be correct. BUT the infected food (venison, whatever) must be cooked at a temperature of at LEAST 600 degrees, for at LEAST 3 hours. As was mentioned in the video, prions aren't actually "alive", so there's no "killing" them. The only thing to do is to destroy them- i.e., turn them to fine ash.
"Thankfully, in humans it usually takes YEARS for the prions to have caused damage sufficient to be noticeable." what's thankful about that? your immediate fate could be sealed but you just don't know it yet.
I wonder who was the first person to suggest this meal?... 'Just wash the maggots off, cook it, it'll be fine.'
Now this is a Try Not To Laugh Challenge
The ultimate try-not-to-laugh-challenge.
Ohhhhhhh... That's where they got that episode of X-Files about cannibalism transmitting a disease.
Well now… this made for some rather strange dinner time enlightenment…. Chicken Parmigiana shall never be the same ..
Watching this while eating a delicious Rizzuto! Is my rice moving in my plat???
Yes!
Anyone else hear “the Simpsons were…” and not “the symptoms were” at the very beginning? I was so confused for a second there.
Started LOLing and now I'm dead...
I think eating the maggots may of helped
the disease metastasis.
Fun fact: this is what was making the dinos sick in “Jurassic Park”!
09:55 MBM is still being used in pet food?!
JEZUS CHRIST that's horrible
Thanks, UA-cam subtitles. "Life Horse" and "Curry disease" will have me laughing for weeks.
How did you get through making this without vomiting?!
Apparently the only cure for deadly laughter is watching Simon try to riff on business blaze...
So, does that mean that zombies that eat brains are going to eventually start laughing? I don't think I'm ready for that!
When I saw the title of this video it reminded me of the scene in an old Batman movie where a news reporter laughed herself to death
Whoever is in charge of naming these deadly diseases was on their 2 week notice when they came up with scrapy and naggy naggy
As a UK resident as soon as u said CJD I thought oh shit MAD CANNIBAL DISEASE !
Mad cow disease caused such a sensation that I cannot believe I hadn't heard of prion before this. Probably I just assumed it was caused by a virus or perhaps the cause was identified so late that news editors had lost interest. Thank you for the education!
For some reason, I knew it was going to come around to mad cow disease.
News reporter laughs itself to death
I was just discussing Kuru with people in SWTOR the other day. Fun topic. Not so fun disease. (Kuru actually shows up in the Smuggler's storyline, after a fashion. I don't think the authors of the questline actually looked much into it, but there were giggling cannibals dying one by one.)
Another not-so-fun fact: one of my great-grandparents died of kreutzfeld jacob. As far as I know, it was spontaneous, not from eating mad cows.
those CCs tho! 👀
The Joker approves.
Josh where is Drake
@@ilovehelldivers5317 *Gold*
Joker venom - Rampant Replicating Prions
@@niklasdahlgren7641
🤔 Now there’s an idea…
My first guess as soon as you described the symptoms in the beginning was that it was a prion disease. Next guess was some kind of mercury poisoning.
Right next to this video in my recommendations is a video by Name Explain titled "Where does the name Guinea come from?" Well played algorithm, well played.
Oh thank God his glasses are back.
The fact that an agent that causes such terrible diseases cannot be killed by cooking is scary as hell.
Huh. I was so sure that it was spread by flies.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like an apricot.
No that was the "sleeping disease" which I think has a very similar name. I just don't remember what it was.