• Wait, what lab experiment? Prions don’t need to be created. That protein can mis-fold randomly, in any of the creatures it occurs in. There’s a ridiculously small chance that you or I could one day just have an unlucky mis-fold and develop the disease without any prior exposure.

    • From the article:

      “Chronic wasting disease first erupted at an experimental agricultural station in Colorado in 1967 where scientists were conducting feeding experiments on captive deer. Sheep infected with scrapie, another prion disease, served as the control group.”