Wildlife authorities in Georgia are warning about ‘zombie deer disease’ after the state’s first case.
A white-tail deer in Lanier County contracted the devastating neurological disease, according to officials with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Resources Division.
Chronic Wasting Disease is the official name for the ailment, which is only known to affect deer, elk and moose. It got its name because one of the main symptoms is drastic weight loss, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
There are no treatments or cures, and infected animals always die if they contract the disease.
Walter Rabon, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, told citizens that deer hunting could continue despite this news, WSBTV reported.
‘I want to assure our hunters that deer hunting will continue to thrive in Georgia, despite this current discovery,’ he said. ‘Working together with our hunters and all Georgians, we will manage CWD and maintain healthy deer herds.’
The disease was discovered in 1967 in mule deer herds being studied by scientists in Colorado. Decades later, it has spread to deer across 36 states.
Experts in Colorado warned last year that as many as three quarters of deer are infected in certain parts of the state.
Other than shedding body weight rapidly, CWD-infected animals will experience confusion, subtle head tremors, a droopy head and excessive drooling.
The disease is transmitted between animals through infected saliva, urine and feces.
It’s difficult to contain CWD because deer may not show any symptoms for over a year after being infected. Symptoms only appear when the animal is nearing death.
Plus, some of the tell-tale signs of CWD could be caused by other things like hemorrhagic disease (often called ‘bluetongue’), brain abscesses, or being hit by a vehicle.
The only ways to test for CWD are done after death. The lymph nodes can be removed and sent to a lab, or the brain stem can be cut out, which requires the animal to be decapitated.
CWD hasn’t been known to infect humans, but the CDC says deer which test positive should not be consumed.
That’s because it’s impossible to cook the prions that cause the disease out of the meat.
Prions are misshapen proteins that can cause normal proteins in the brain to fold abnormally. This leads to brain damage that causes mental deterioration, involuntary muscle movements and eventually, death.
The most common prion disease that is transmissible to humans is Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).
It mimics symptoms seen with Alzheimer’s disease, but CJD usually gets worse much faster and is fatal, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Cases of CJD are extremely rare, affecting about 350 people in the US per year.
Older people, usually in their sixties are the most likely to contract the disease. Most cases are considered ‘sporadic,’ meaning scientists don’t know how the person was infected.
About 5 percent to 15 percent of cases are inherited genetically and less than one percent of cases are caused by contaminated blood or tissue transplants during a surgery.
(CJD) received public attention in the 1990s when some people in the United Kingdom got sick with a mutated version of the disease.
They developed variant CJ, known as vCJD, after eating meat from diseased cattle. The media eventually dubbed it ‘Mad Cow Disease.’
Sufferers of CJD usually die within a year of getting their first symptoms, which differs from the deer prion disease in that it kills the animal almost as soon as symptoms appear.
This article by James Cirrone was first published by The Daily Mail on 24 January 2025. Lead Image: One deer in Georgia has tested positive for ‘zombie deer disease’ or Chronic Wasting Disease.
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