Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy

Cannibalism has been in vogue since the dawn of civilization.

We may now abhor it but the fact is that we can not deny that or forefathers ate Humans.

It is a fact that,even today, there is Cannibalism .

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I have posted a few blogs on this under interesting and funny.

I wondered whether people ate people because they had no other option to survive like the cases where some the Arctic and Antarctic Explorers resorted to it;or is it because it is healthy?

I checked.

It is not Safe but dangerous too.

The real danger comes about if the person you attempt to ingest happens to be infected with prions, which lead to a class of diseases called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. A prion is a bizarre infectious agent. Unlike other things you can catch that make you sick, like bacteria, viruses, parasites, or fungi, prions don’t have genetic material and aren’t really alive. Actually, they’re proteins that are misfolded, and when they infect a healthy organism, they cause its normal proteins to start misfolding as well, leading to a sort of chain-reaction. And this mostly happens in the brain. Eventually, the prions will eat holes in the tissue, causing a characteristic swiss cheese appearance. Thus the name transmissible spongiform encephalopathy. Transmissible, meaning that it’s highly infectious. Spongiform, literally meaning a form that looks like a sponge. And encephalopathy comes from pathy, or disease, and encephalo, meaning inside the head (as in the brain).

Prion infection is untreatable and always fatal. It leads to painful neurodegeneration, resulting in dementia and ataxia, or uncoordinated and uncontrolled muscle movements. This can be seen in a common manifestation of prion disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. Mad cow spreads when animals eat infected tissue, but it can also occur spontaneously, and it may be passed down genetically. And we can get a human variant if we eat beef that’s infected with mad cow. Although the concentration of prions is highest in the brain and spinal cord, they can be found in blood, muscle, and even bone. And cooking the meat does nothing to destroy the prions. Whether it be cow or human flesh, spongiform encephalopathies are still highly contagious even when served well-done.

Creutzfelt-Jacob disease is the most common human prion disease, but it’s still relatively rare, affecting only one in one million people. It usually comes about via a random mutation, through familial inheritance, or by grafts or transfusions from an infected individual. Cannibalism is more often associated with a disease known as kuru, first described in Papua New Guinea in the 1950s. There, the Fore tribe practiced ritualistic cannibalism, eating the brains of recently deceased relatives in an effort to capture their “life force.” And although the practice was halted by the 1960s, the last reported kuru death was in 2005. Prion incubation periods can span anywhere from 5 to 40 years, during which a person has no symptoms. But during its acute phase, kuru comes on with a vengeance, causing whole-body tremors. Within six to eighteen months, kuru victims die.

Cannibalism through the Ages.

Man cooks his genitals and sells it.

In 2012, a Japanese man had his genitals removed and then seasoned them before cooking them for five paying dinner party guests. Mao Sugiyama, 22, who is asexual, had voluntarily undergone surgery to have them removed. However, the illustrator took his frozen penis and scrotum home from the hospital and organized a grim party.

He charged guests around $250 per person to eat his severed genitalia in Tokyo, Japan. They were garnished with mushrooms and parsley. Before tucking into dinner, guests sat down to listen to a piano recital and take part in a panel discussion.

Mao, who goes by the nickname HC, had initially considered eating his own penis – but decided to serve them up, instead. He cooked the genitalia himself as he was supervised by a chef. In a Tweet, he offered to cook his penis for a guest for 100,000 yen. However, he ultimately decided to split the “meal” between six guests.

In total, around 70 people attended the event in the Suginami ward in Tokyo. While five people tucked into Mao Sugiyama’s genitalia, the rest of them ate beef or crocodile. The people who ate his genitalia were a 30-year-old couple, a 22-year-old woman, a 32-year-old man, and Shigenobu Matsuzawa, 29, an event planner.
Sources.

http://www.oddee.com/item_98622.aspx#HDbOGjh3VMRG1Jek.99

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/08/cannibalism_n_1501513.html