"One of the problems is that once the [CWD] prion is excreted into the environment, it may last for many, many years. This thing is heat stable up to 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit."
"If people don't take [chronic wasting disease] very seriously or even discard the kind of information that says, 'Don’t eat CWD products in venison,' and they wait until we have evidence of CWD transmission to humans, I feel like then we'll really fall off the cliff on CWD."
"Public health is really closely tied to the social, political and economic issues of the world. Where they go awry, public health can quickly go awry."
"We have a gas can with an Ebola match hitting it. If this gets into large metropolitan areas, it's going to be like a gas tanker with an Ebola match hitting it."
"We must understand the risk of transmission of CWD prions to humans with the ever increasing consumption of infected venison and how we reduce the possibility that one day we may have a tragic replay of a bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease-like scenario in North America."
"It is like having one huge child-care facility, operating with a number of people challenged by their [levels of] chemical intake. . . . Just one or two people vomiting . . . could explain this entire situation. People might think it was because they drank too much alcohol, but it's actually (that they were sick with) norovirus."
They're "the heart and soul of a lot of the decisions being made about where to expend resources. . . . How to respond, where to respond and when to respond require an everyday review of what we hope is good intelligence, and the group is expert at that."
"Last year, we estimate that as many as 15,000 carcasses may have been served to people that were CWD-positive. And what people don’t understand with prion-related conditions like this is that time changes the risk."
"This is an exceptional collaboration by those most knowledgeable about a particular food safety risk. Their value in shedding light on the Cyclospora cayetanensis outbreak problem cannot be overstated and is already providing long-needed assistance toward discovering how best to manage risk and limit future outbreaks."
"We are truly in uncharted Ebola-control territory. Even in the 2014-15 [Ebola] epidemic in West Africa, once public health programs and vaccination efforts were put into place, it brought about a rather rapid reduction of cases. We've never encountered a situation where a geographic region becomes almost completely impossible to work in because of insecurity."
"A lot of people thought that [taking precaution against BSE] was an overreaction. Then, of course, in 1996, 10 years later, we recognized that in fact transmission had occurred."
"You are going to hear from people that [CWD] is not going to be a problem other than a game farm issue. You're going to hear from people that it's not going to transmit to people and I hope they're right, but I wouldn't bet on it. And if we lose this one and haven't done all we can do, we will pay a price."
"I think it's very important because it helps give the world a better sense of how effective this [Ebola] vaccine is. And that the real challenges are not about 'Does the vaccine work?' It’s whether the vaccine gets used.
