Question

11. Anthropologists studying a tribe on an island in the South Pacific ask you to help them with an intriguing health problem: the chiefs of the tribe keep dying at a much more rapid rate than other members of the population. You travel to the island to observe the tribe, and you find that each time an animal is killed during a hunt, the body of the animal is shared communally among all of the members of the tribe. However, one part of the animal, its brain, is reserved exclusively for the tribal chief. The chief consumes the brain raw because it is believed that this allows him to assimilate the animal's knowledge of the island. What would you suggest is causing the death of the tribal chiefs, how is it killing them, and what is the mechanism of transmission?

Answer 1

The death of the tribe chief is due to the consumption of the brain of dead animals.consuming of the brain of animals which is infected.

prion disease or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies(TSE)are incurable brains caused by modification of the prion protein. Transmission of prion has caused bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cattle, which in turn has caused variant creutzfeldt-Jacob diseases in humans.

the causative agent "prions" refers to an abnormal, pathogenetic agent that is transmissible and is able to induce abnormal folding of a specific normal cellular protein called prion proteins that are found most abundant in the brain. the abnormal folding of the prion proteins leads to brain damage and the characteristics signs and symptoms of the disease.it usually rapidly progressive and always fatal.

so the consumption of regular raw bain of animals causes the tribe chief prion disease and it causes death.