Scrapie

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1977 In his 1977 paper "Unconventional Viruses and the Origin and Disappearance of Kuru," Gajdusek postulated that the cause of kuru, scrapie and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease were caused by what he termed an unconventional virus. In comparison to normal viruses, unconventional viruses had a long incubation period and did not cause an immune response in the host. Although Gajdusek noted that there were no demonstrable nucleic acids in unconventional viruses, he did not rule out the possibility that unconventional viruses contained RNA at a low level, despite their radiation resistance.[3] These infectious agents were later discovered to be misfolded proteins, or prions.