Hey PMSElle, look on the bright side, they are only grinding them up and using them for viagra, and not fucking them in the arse
As for prion diseases, that is a very valid concern. And with prions, the nasty thing about them is that it, in theory, only takes a tiny amount of the 'organism' that causes for instance, CJD, VCJD or kuru (the latter of which IS known to be transmitted by eating people), the prion protein is normally present in the brain, and the infectious 'organism' (I use that term to describe prions out of convenience) acts autocatalytically to change the conformation of the native protein to more of the mutated, toxic prion.
They are more of a poison, than an infection, not being alive, like bacteria, viruses, viroids, amoeba and the like, although they (disease-causing prions are nevertheless, infectious, and HIGHLY resistant to decontamination by most normal means, autoclaving, antiseptics, antibiotics. Difficult to kill something that was never alive to begin with, and they are unusually resistant to denaturation by heat, compared to most proteins)
Once a prion infection takes hold, then the toxic form spontaneously induces the native, healthy form to convert to further variant prion protein, increasing exponentially.
