>>11149291These answers you got are all wrong for what makes prions so damn scary.
There are two types of prion disease. The first is the common one people know of, mad cow disease aka Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. This involves the ingestion of prions from cows and other tissues then the transport across the gut into the mass of neuronal tissue that regulates our digestion and other things. This is then spread up the central nerves connecting to your brain and you die. There is no cure or way to stop it once it has started. Luckily if you are not homozygous for a particular amino acid in your prion protein (PRPc) gene then you can't get it this way. Only about 40% of the population is.
This comes to the second method to get a prion disease. Spontaneous Creutzfeldt Jakob disease. Literally just walking down the street and something misfolds and 5 months later you are a dementia ridden husk waiting for someone to put you out of your misery so you don't have to slowly experience your lungs losing the ability to move.
