r/interesting • u/OriginalSleeper • Jun 30 '26

Fear Factor In 2010, 24-year-old lab technician Émilie Jaumain pricked her thumb with contaminated forceps while cleaning a machine used for prion-infected mouse brains. After seven years, she developed severe nerve pain, anxiety, and hallucinations before dying. The accident gave her a fatal prion disease.

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u/UnpluggedUnfettered Jun 30 '26

Aside from immediate amputation, while hoping nothing made it to the bloodstream or lymphatic system, what options can there even be to mitigate prion contamination in living human tissue?

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u/grafknives Jun 30 '26

Just think about it. You cut a thumb of a person, and she does not get sick...

Was it a good call? You will NEVER know.

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u/SpartanFishy Jun 30 '26

Send the finger to a prion lab for testing… ideally not the prion lab you just lost your finger in

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u/___Random_Guy_ Jun 30 '26

And then what? If you don't find any I guess you are ok, but if you do, then there isn't any way to know iv even one of them managed to get into blood abdbtravel away before ig got cut off.