Best Practices In Pathway Management
Gary Chandler is the CEO of Crossbow Communications. He has influenced public opinion and public policy on public health and environmental issues around the world for more than 30 years. He has authored several books for New York publishers. Chandler has been studying the global surge in neurodegenerative disease among mammals for more than 25 years.
The Purpose Of The Presentation: Of the major diseases, neurodegenerative disease is the fastest-growing cause of death in the world. Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) is the medical term for several forms of neurodegenerative disease, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ( ALS), Alzheimer’s disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome, Huntington’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. TSE also is the medical term for mad cow disease in livestock and chronic wasting disease in wildlife. The only difference between the various forms of TSE is the region of the brain under attack or the species of the victim.
TSE also is known as prion (PREE-on) disease. The multitude of names adds to the confusion surrounding TSE, which makes it more challenging for epidemiologists to spot the propensity of the problem. Plus, TSEs are not reportable diseases in most countries.
More than 50 million people worldwide are living with neurodegenerative diseases, with the number rising dramatically. The most common conditions are Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Millions of people will go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed.
Hypothesis: As the medical term implies, the various forms of TSE are transmissible. People and animals afflicted with TSE produce great volumes of infectious waste, which contaminates the world around them. Infectious waste is fueling the spread of TSE in homes, healthcare facilities and communities around the world in people of all ages.
Prion Science: Dr. Stanley Prusiner, the Director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of California, San Francisco , earned the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1997 for research on an infectious protein that he called a prion – the neurotoxin associated with TSE. As such, TSE also is known as prion disease.
Prusiner confirmed that TSEs, including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, are forms of prion disease. He confirmed that amyloid beta and tau are infectious prions.
Unfortunately, some critical aspects of Prusiner’s research are being ignored. As such, deadly proteins are migrating, mutating and multiplying throughout communities and watersheds around the world.
Prion infectivity is more than a hypothesis. It is award-winning science. Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy is a transmissible disease, as its name implies. Caregivers and family are at risk when exposed to people with TSE. Victims are infectious long before they are symptomatic.
There are several factors that can contribute to the cause of TSE. Exposure to prion contamination is definitely an X factor. Prion contamination is almost impossible to sterilize – even in the confines of hospitals and healthcare facilities. As such, prions migrate, mutate and multiply as they move from host to host.
Pathway Management: Prion pathways include every part of the human body.Blood, skin, urine, feces, mucus, organs and tissue. Those infected contaminate everything that they touch. Coughing and sneezing spreads prions. As mentioned earlier, prion contamination can’t be washed off. Autoclaves are ineffective. Thanks to the illegal dumping of infectious waste on land, we are now dealing with wide-scale contamination of land and entire watersheds. Species barriers to TSE are a myth.
Evidence: Hospitals have been sued successfully for negligence (exposed patients to contaminated medical equipment). Growth hormones have been harvested from people with TSE and administered to patients seeking to boost childhood growth. Since there hasn’t been any screening for prion disease, blood and organs from TSE victims have been donated to unsuspecting patients. Many hospitals now discard expensive medical equipment after a single use on patients with prion disease. Morticians follow strict infection-control measures when handling the body of someone who died from prion disease. These precautions include wearing personal protective equipment, placing the body in a leak-proof bag, and attempting to disinfect all surfaces and equipment. Unfortunately, they are handling many bodies which were never diagnosed.
There is not any credible evidence that Alzheimer’s disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Parkinson’s disease and other forms of TSE are not transmissible.
Meanwhile, several studies have found an increased risk of dementia among older adults whose spouses have dementia. Neurodegenerative disease has more to do with an unstoppable neurotoxin than age. Teenagers are now dying of neurodegenerative disease.
Conclusion: Prevention. Treatment. Containment. If we hope to prevent neurodegenerative disease, we must treat TSE as an infectious disease in all cases. Families and caregivers must be advised. If we hope to contain prion contamination, we must defend all pathways from severely infected waste – lethal waste. It is impossible to manage all prion pathways, but the truth will go a very long way. we need a coordinated and cohesive approach to pathway management around the world. From source to sewage.
Thanks to sewage mismanagement, entire watersheds have been contaminated – putting food and water supplies at risk. We are dumping millions of tons of infectious waste in all of the wrong places around the world every year. In the United States, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency admits that its risk assessment on such dumping practices is incomplete. Unfortunately, the dumping and contamination continue. Extreme weather is spreading this infectious waste far and wide. Food and water supplies are exposed to prion contamination in most, if not all, countries.
Given the aggressive dynamics of infectious prion disease, we must act out of an abundance of caution regarding prion containment. Best practices are evolving, but we must optimize pathway management in homes, healthcare facilities, blood donation centers, dental offices, and throughout our communities. Since there is not a cure for transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, prevention is paramount. It will take a comprehensive and collective effort among stakeholders around the world to develop and continually refine best practices in pathway management. The challenge is immediate.
This post supports my presentation at the 11th Edition: Global Congress on Aging & Gerontology (Aging & Gerontology 2026). For more information, please contact Gary Chandler Gary@CrossbowCommunications.com
