afactcheck

Good advice. Fortunately for the aspiring cannibal, however, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease is very rare with an estimated prevalence of 1 case per million people per year [1], and it's exposure to prions through the eating of infected meat that allows transmission this way rather than cannibalism specifically.

There's a popular belief that cannibalism can cause prion disease. However, this seems not to be the case with famous outbreaks such as Kuru being the result of many members of the community eating or being exposed to the brain tissue of already infected individuals [2]. Concern of transmission via eating meat of animals with a prion disease was the reason for European bans on British Beef in the 90s and 2000s [3].

If you're concerned about exposure to prion disease then good news! They are rare diseases and research suggests that most (87%) of the few cases that do occur are due to protein misfolding in the individual (spontaneous CJD) rather than genetics (familial CJD) or prion exposure (iatrogenic and variant CJD) [4].

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170704234755/https://www.ninds... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)#Transmission [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopat... [4] https://doi.org/10.1002%2Fana.410430611

> That is actually how pretty much all new houses in the UK are constructed

This claim struck me as unlikely, so I did a quick fact check.

Accroding to the most recent report I could find[1]: "Figures from the National House Building (NHBC) suggest that timber frame market share has developed from 19% in 2015 to 22% in 2021 and that market conditions, as described above, present the opportunity for this to develop to circa 27% by the end of the forecast period (2025)"

This appears to be driven by Scotland where 92% of new builds were timber framed in 2019, while in England (where the majority of new houses are built) it was just 9%.

[1] https://members.structuraltimber.co.uk/assets/library/stamar...