Wasting Deer: Deer saliva and blood can carry prions
By Susan Milius
For the first time, researchers have shown that saliva alone can transmit a brain-destroying disease from one animal to another.
Three oral doses of saliva from a deer sick with chronic wasting disease passed the infection to other deer kept in isolation suites indoors, reports Edward Hoover of Colorado State University in Fort Collins. The finding gives substance to worries that the disease spreads through such deer social habits as touching noses and licking to groom each other.