Zombob's Zombie News and Reviews

STUDY SHOWS ZOMBIES HAVE NO IMMUNITY TO BRAIN-BORNE DISEASES

Washington, D.C. – When George Romero made his little black and white film in the late 1960’s it’s fairly safe to assume that he couldn’t have dreamt of the success it would bring. That movie, ‘Night of the Living Dead, has proven to be the template for 
hundreds of movies, books, video games, and even children’s television shows. Romero’s invention has become one of the most venerable of monsters with only Bram Stoker’s creation rivalling them in popularity.

Romero’s tale, like Stokers, was of course based in part on reality. Tales of zombification have been prevalent across the western world and have been a tried and true practice in the past history of Voodoo. Romero’s riff on those real world tales is what has pushed them into the modern world and become a boon for horror creators and horror fans the world over. Real world science has also become interested in the possibility of real life zombies and though it’s unlikely that a global apocalypse will ever occur, the study has remained compelling and relevant. A new study has also quelled fears of a global apocalypse at the hands of zombies, indicating that the brain and flesh eating monsters would be undone by the very thing that makes them most dangerous, their desire for human flesh.

“Evolution is a long process and because of that it is often difficult to actually see it in action. We have documented cases though. The Fore people in Papua New Guinea long practiced the eating of human brains as a sign of respect for those who had passed on. This practice led to a disease called kuru, similar to mad cow disease, which killed thousands,” said Dr. Michelle Waylow of the CDC.  “Many though remained healthy which was a result of them developing a natural immunity to the disease, an evolutionary step forward designed to sustain life. That practice has been largely discontinued now but the mutation still exists in many of the people of that region, something that likely would not be passed on to zombies.”

Kuru killed at least 2500 people in the first half of the 20th century until the practice was halted. The Fore people continue to carry a gene mutation that protects them against the ravages of the disease.

“In actuality very few members of the tribe actually carry the gene but had the practice continued it’s likely that all of those absent of the mutation would have died and those with it would have thrived. 

The issue here though how much genetic material would human beings retain once they are converted to zombies and what we believe is very little,” continued Waylow. “Essentially the types of zombies depicted in movies are a distinct species from human beings. They possess very little of what we would consider human behaviour or traits which would lead us to believe that the virus that overtakes quickly rewrites the DNA structure, a kind of instant mutation. Small changes like this would likely be lost in such a transition.”

Because of the small number of people actually possessed of the mutation it’s also seen as unlikely that the majority of zombies would even be exposed to the disease.

“Because human beings and zombies are still biologically the same the disease would likely affect them in the same way. The diet of raw brains and flesh would inevitably cause serious disease in the zombie population meaning that eventually they would all die out naturally, likely before they were able to do serious damage to the human population,” continued Waylow.

 “Of course this is all largely speculative because we have still been unable to replicate true movie-style zombies in lab settings but at least we know that if some kind of apocalypse does in fact occur the human race can have hope that we will not be totally destroyed, and that it is us, essentially, that will be fighting back even in death.”

~http://scrapetv.com/