You suppose we've got enough data after decades of aggressive culling to review whether aggressive culling is an effective means of stopping CWD? I also think it's time we review deer populations and human CJD incidence in areas that have had CWD for 40+ years. Maybe we might learn that the quacks theories never panned out, the deer are fine, and nobody has turned into flesh eating zombies.
A great example of how many landowners use management tags judiciously.
I don't think I ever claimed that aggressive culling would stop CWD. What I said was the best we could hope for was to use science and good judgement to slow the spread and give nature time to respond.
There are a large number of factors. Culling deer with the intent to slow CWD is done very differently in different locations. How prevalent the disease was in a target area before culling was begun varies significantly between locations. The target of culling can vary as well. Some places focused on reducing overall populations and others targeted specific categories of deer. The epidemiologic data can vary from location to location. Yarding in the north may contribute more to spread than in areas where deer don't yard.
Quite an interesting perspective. Doctors bled patients as a cure for many, many years. The nay-sayers were eventually proven right. One doctor posited that disease was caused by invisible stuff we now call germs. Completely derided by his peers at the time. Over time, proven right. It took many years for the standards of practice to change.
Who is this "they" you keep referring to? Care to cite actual scientific publication?
Hit up scholar.google.com and search chronic wasting disease. There are plenty of papers from scientific research.
This! It's hard to make policy decisions when you only have a few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.
That is exactly right, and science can be slow. You don't know what you don't know. So, when hypotheses are developed and tested, the results can often raise additional questions. While technology has been moving along according to Moore's rule, basic science plods along at a much slower pace. It becomes even more difficult to apply the science that we do have in the uncontrolled environment of nature. Then add to that the confusion that special interests and politics bring to the table. No wonder many folks are frustrated.
Is there evidence that anything that has been done has been effective in stopping the disease?
I think we are talking past each other. Science doesn't answer arbitrary questions. It is a method where hypotheses are proposed, and experiment is constructed, and tests provide some level of evidence in support or reject the hypothesis. It can take year or decades to even construct some experiments. As RGrizzz indicated, there are many solid scholarly articles that provide references to studies related to CWD. Science takes small bites. As evidence builds over time in support of a hypothesis, it becomes "accepted science", but it is always "believed" to be true, but only until such time that new hypotheses and experiments produce sufficient evidence to refute it.
That may be a bit of an oversimplification. Deer herds are doing different things in different areas and CWD is only one of a wide variety of factors. I've never met a biologist who ever had expectation of reversing prevalence in endemic areas or stopping further spread. I think most acknowledge that those are unrealistic goals. I think the most that can be hoped for is to slow the spread of the disease into new areas.
