[q1w2]

Not only blood transfusions, but ligament/tendon transplants from cadavers are extremely common for people who tear their ACL.

It would be a disaster if this type of surgery also transmitted some prior/protein misfolding disease decades later. Millions would be impacted. The practice stared in the 1980s, but really only became popular in the early 2000s with the boom in arthroscopic surgery standardization.

Hopefully the blood-brain barrier prevents this.

[eigenvalue]

Oh man, I bet you’re right and enough time hasn’t gone by to see the fallout from it! I bet rich people will start bidding up tendons and ligaments from younger cadavers (probably mostly motorcycle accident victims). Although given that so many of those have toxoplasmosis, maybe that’s also not great…

[fbdab103]

One estimate says that 30-50% of all human beings have toxoplasmosis, so I would put that as pretty low on the list of risks.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3963851/

[ikrenji]

those tissues are unlikely to carry prions. prions are concentrated in the brain.

[timschmidt]

Unlikely != zero risk, and concentrated != isolated?

[coffeebeqn]

Could they test the donor first for these proteins or whatever is causing it?

[PeterisP]

We probably could, but only after we'd figure out what exactly is causing it.