[Scandiravian]

I think that's an interesting point. Do you have a source for your statement, that most of the research happens post mortem?

It makes sense to me that non-lethal cases wouldn't be discovered, as it's probably prohibitively expensive to screen for non-lethal/dormant infections. It could also be that the progression is so slow for most people, that they die from unrelated causes before the disease becomes a problem (this is pure conjecture on my part)

[ortusdux]

The first promising blood test for mad cow (vCJD) was developed in 2016. Prior to that, "The only current method to diagnose vCJD is to perform a biopsy or a postmortem analysis of brain tissue." (NIH 2017).

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/new-met...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5538786/

Scientists have since developed a promising method that relies on analyzing the retina.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/scientists-ide...

[Scandiravian]

Thank you for the links - I look forward to reading the articles :-)