Joe Rogan Experience #1154 — Doug Duren & Bryan Richards Transcript

Transcript

0:00 Five, four, three, two, one. And, well, we're going to talk about a bunch of things, but one of the things that I wanted a domesticated animal and have them all feeding off of the same pile of food and they share I wouldn't say that makes me necessarily an expert, out at this point in time science Science is unable to rule it out. The first we look at would be geographic spread. So CWD 20 years ago was thought to be this really

3:25 All right, so this is a member of a family of diseases called transmissible spongiform Right. That's an interesting, you know, there's a, it goes back and forth on whether it's prion or prion. And correct me if I'm wrong, but it also is making its way into the actual plants that these animals eat. And as is the practice, was the practice in the Foray tribe in Papua New Guinea,

6:33 And so when they got sick and died, fed it again. Not exactly the same thing, but in essence. So at some point in time, a cow developed a TSE, a prion disease. They can persist. So the whole concept that you have a protein, down into its component parts and recycles it. Turns out that normal cellular preamp protein The disease-associated ones can persist in the environment for years and potentially up to decades, okay?

11:12 That incubation period, it's probably shedding infectious agent for the vast majority of that time period. And these are the first ones that you tested that tested positive? When we tested in excess of 35 deer over the last, well, more than that, probably more like 50. transmitting disease, okay, long before it looks clinically ill. And so that's one of the real

13:18 was picked up in Wisconsin at the end of 2001. As of today, CWD has now been picked up in 25 states in captive and or free So reindeer are very gregarious. well, it's the same family of diseases in sheep. It's actually the first one that was described, And so without those neurons firing, you fall into that progressive degeneration. They were going to kill every reindeer in an entire herd unit in Norway.

17:11 And in Norway, they have two or three different herds. But isn't there a concern that the hunters could eat something with CWD So they killed every reindeer in this herd unit. So it's a good first guess. shedding infectious agent out into the environment, it persists for years to decades, do it early. Likely, yeah. Yeah, isn't that interesting? contracted it yeah that's interesting and the reason why was the man ate the

21:19 The women and children got the internal organs, And I don't know how CWD got brought up. 80%, 90% of a herd can be killed in a single event. and within about two weeks, the disease They're supplementing some of the food with, I don't know what they're using, So even if people get bitten by these midges, going up, up, up. In captive facilities, the Hall Farm in Wisconsin, where CWD was first detected

25:27 So no stop. There's no known feature which stops the transmission cycle. And so when you say that And we're on the front edge of it now. Misreporting? So there's a few things we can look at. But now these are models. It's not quite the same as pumping CWD into the brain of a human patient and seeing what developed. So, yeah. still all that same identical strand of amino acids, and it's shaped, that tertiary form must

30:19 And in deer, in CWD, that loop is very, very rigid. So now it turns out mice, experimental laboratory mice, Oh, fuck. Is Ted Nugent's ideas, are these unique? And to get to the – you almost want to stick your head in the sand and just forget about it. Now, what are you doing in your place i understand you're just on a mass call well i feel like i'm on the front edge uh well i don't feel like it i am on the front edge of the spread

34:26 They wanted to kill all the deer in a particular area. Uniquely versus doe? especially with the white-tailed deer, adult males tend to gather in these bachelor groups. or that it's gone into agriculture, to food sources, to corn and what have you, leaves. Okay. And so that's one possible mechanism. A second is that some prions themselves, It's, yeah. Okay. So a deer could eat those plants, and that could be one of the possible transmission mechanisms.

38:32 We have just south of where he lives, Yes. Yeah. Okay. So take that amount times 20% or that amount, whatever percent have CWD, It's important to say that Brian's a scientist. there are people who want absolute proof. Proof is hard in a biological world because it's not so bad. But this is a non-scientific approach to this because these are unrelated issues.

41:59 We saw a real great example of this about a year ago where there's a lot of letters to the editor being sent into newspapers in areas where CWD is. our study can use as a baseline for comparison at a later point in time should disease change over time. This is something that has the potential to reach large-scale agriculture. But what terrifies me is this potential for a pandemic disease

45:18 and this could potentially infect human beings and spread across, I mean, the entire country, And the mule deer have an extended range in terms of like their migration. That's one of the things So they went in and captured deer in an adjacent area, put radio telemetry collars on these to see, well, just how far do they go? So in that 80 miles could potentially be spreading CWD if it was an infected deer.

47:23 It crossed the river river and it just say it will. We absolutely cannot say it will not. It's an open question. And one thing we can Brian, you put it as the chances are very small at this point that it can, Every one of them. The one says hello, by the way. Right. It's kind of crazy. uh i would like to see him go through the security checkpoint carrying you know bags of beef with him

51:52 before they potentially show any effects. And so that's why one of the precautionary measures for BSE in the United States Well, that's with CWD and with scrapie and sheep as well. With BSE, and let me clarify, So there's that artificial process involved. Kind of freaking me out a little bit. Because these animals are shedding, okay? can be done? All kinds of studies being done, different

55:46 and there have been hearings on that lately. What Doug's getting at is... deer to deer to deer, that slow diffusive process of moving out on the landscape. That's really hard and it brought the whole damn thing back. Well, back in the day, it still happens. The 25 states that don't have CWD don't want to get it. They don't want it bad. I shouldn't even call them high fence operations because some of them are wild animals that are contained in a fence.

59:23 They don't like they have like 80 points yeah instead Well, and genetics play a role. Let them get old and give them plenty of food. there's only one measure of genetic fitness, and that's how well represented you are in the next The wild animal. with. You know, female caribou have antlers as well them to fight with you know female caribou have when they were on the face of the earth, it was when, you know, animals were larger,

1:03:39 Just type in Google ridiculous farm deer antlers and you get a sense of what we're talking about for the people that are watching this on YouTube. Drawing. Yeah. then they'll hunt them and then they'll pretend that that's a wild animal that they shot Right, and we had a recent one where a CWD-positive farm in Wisconsin, They're not the whole equation.

1:06:27 If you Google tame deer, you'll find some from the late 1800s when photographs became possible of deer following people around. Well, deer breeders in the state of Texas, like many states, need a permit from a state agency Ohio's got several hundred. So I've got a lot of other stuff. out in the trash. Or maybe on the way home, I'm driving past a state-owned, a state park or a

1:10:01 it's a citizen group and we have some say in There are some who don't. Patterson, was looking at this issue 10 years ago to try and figure out, can it be safely done? But the thought of it, the risk associated with it, the liability, And it is something I'd like to talk about a little bit. on your website and I see some take it and some don't. And her response was, we have no legislative

1:13:40 a 20-yard dumpster. You've got a pile of bones in the old milk house down there until you find out whether it's positive or not. And it's easy. essentially, that hunters and sportsman's groups will gather those heads and then take leave the bones on your farm. solution is dig a hole, but from the one deer, Because this shit's spreading, man. would be wildlife disease, human disease, livestock disease, prevention. Number one,

1:18:07 That's why when we had an Ebola outbreak in 2015 in Liberia on Ivory Coast, we stopped commercial airline flights. We didn't want people inadvertently moving it out. So prevent, don't move it around, conduct surveillance it's likely it's going to be very challenging to create a therapeutic, something that treats a have been trying to develop vaccines for TSEs, for prion diseases for a long time. Okay. None

1:20:31 after giving this vaccine to some elk, giving a placebo to other elk, and then leaving him protection, quote unquote, protection from disease. Now, all but one of the animals that But think about it. Even if we do create a vaccine that works, that prevents CWD, and prevent as opposed to slowing, there's a very big distinction. I'm not talking about just a giant die-off.

1:23:34 do get CWD. Okay. And they transmit it. They get it at a lower rate. They likely transmit it. animals that has a high prevalence of CWD, I guess I don't see that as a desirable endpoint So we don't know if they'll get there. Does Alaska have it? More than 50% of the states have it. what Ted said on the podcast, there's a very good reason. He knows a lot about conservation. He knows a lot about conservation.

1:26:46 When it enters the central nervous system, So that's a pretty significant set of clinical signs and that degree of penetrance into the population, You know, I got to tell you, man, I killed this deer, Not the one before. It's a virus. That's likely CWD, yes, absolutely. That's a wild deer. So it's almost like this disease is trying to spread itself.

1:30:29 set of characteristics. Plus, they look perfectly healthy. So we have no idea that they're diseased Wisconsin they can you know periodically a single a single yearling will wander down from northeastern part of Minnesota, Very similar to how humans... and think about how mountain lions hunt. They're ambush hunters. So if you're a deer and you're not

1:33:49 And at some point, wolves and CWD will meet. So there's been mathematical models developed, and they still wouldn't stop all of the bodily fluids. to slow or stop disease from spreading? and take it out of the toolbox? Science has been done. Not that we're aware of. consume that material? Well, maybe not now, but it might be fertilizer two years down the road for

1:37:54 We know that deer to deer to deer to deer, well, you can't stop deer from doing deer activities, right? about there are all these natural movements that we can't do anything about. But if we can slow the spread by stopping these unnatural gatherings of deer and these unnatural spreading of the disease, he's sharing, spreading infectious agent into that corn. It can persist on that corn for a long,

1:40:43 Daycare, the analogy there is that pile of corn on the ground. area where disease is established is there anything we can do? And there's certainly things we can try, right? we focused on adult males, okay? so it's not going to be a very desirable from a a hunter's perspective, tool. The deer I shot last year were deer that seven, eight years ago I'm not one of those people.

1:44:22 a few different reasons one of them is disease the other one is that when i have too many deer, my little oak trees are getting, because they love those little oak trees, and they're getting chewed off and I'm trying to do multiple things. and you could shoot one doe between four people because I mean, I'm going to be 60 years old, Joe. What the fuck?

1:46:04 and you're managing to increase the I shot a doe so the herd won't grow. By 1980, on opening day, I remember I counted 160 deer on opening day. Well, I don't know about agriculture. One of the groups is talking about, it's called antler point restrictions. And they argue that that will keep hunters engaged. And if hunters are engaged, they'll So will it keep hunters engaged? That's a sociological question that I can't really address. But from a purely biological disease-driven

1:50:36 And because this information is not that digestible, I think that there's – I know you talked about it on meat eater episode getting out now so people understand the and is absolutely spreading. No question. Some of the, you know, the take-home points I always There's other things it can do. You know, in deer camp, what's the easiest thing to do? change in how a government agency goes about its business, should you talk to the local biologist

1:53:34 where this first effort started. The state of Missouri, the Missouri Department of Conservation, said, yes, Department of Conservation, you do have the right to restrict import of animals into captive cervid facilities to protect the integrity of the herd. So just because it's legal doesn't mean it's the right thing to do This could potentially be a large tool in the toolbox of conservation and stopping this

1:56:16 That's it. opposed by a very noisy group of hunters just like and again with my experience with working with the legislature we could drop antlerless tags from a helicopter, shoot as many as you want, and we're still going to kill. generally um uh gun hunters yeah you go out there for two or three days. I got to hunt with folks that maybe had their own place to hunt,

1:59:08 The politicians did. But why don't the politicians understand? I sure hope so, man. having longer seasons, the population trends reversed and started going back up. So it was Well, that was not very popular either. Western states. Okay. And they're promoting the things that we've been talking about, They're talking to their commissions. is that not only is there a lot being learned about the disease,

2:03:45 don't think people are really aware of the extent of this disease or the danger of it or all the and we're advertising it widely. i mean i'm pretty uh not very savvy on social media and things like that i wasn't even And getting it down, like you say, down to a level that, you know know hunters can understand and digestible i think is very very important because we talked about how misinformation

2:06:16 It's a diversionary tactic. It's what they look forward to. And I'll tell you this. Last year, I shot a two and a half year old buck opening day and uh this is a nice little eight pointer and i celebrated that deer i enjoyed that deer i It's a 12-step process. I want to be able to eat the meat. In a place like Wisconsin, there's over 650,000 people that hunt deer.

2:09:05 county west of him and, you know, CWD is coming. I'd say I'm sitting in my tree stand three years It's a coin flip out there? All of the bucks tested, all of the antler bucks tested positive for CWD. Bringing in more people to hunt, to take more deer, and to do what they can to manage it. I talked a little bit about population impacts, driving populations down. The other thing we would identify is changes in that demographic

2:12:00 for these over-mature mule deer, you know, the ones with the antlers, prevalence, and we have that. We've demonstrated that. At two and a half, it's probably 30% Because disease penetrance grows over time. and hopefully that, you know, folks can understand. And that area and the driftless area, and you've heard me talk about the driftless area before

2:14:22 You know, I know what my dad would be saying. Maybe it has something to do with being 60 years old. And they were dramatically changing the landscape, you know, denuding the landscape, you know, eating eastern white cedar. real proponent of showing people the results of doing things the wrong way and education. My pleasure. Thank you, guys. Thank you.