OneTrueChaika

Woah buddy slow down there.

genetic diseases like Prion, that get spread through cannibalism

Ok first off, let me explain some bits cause you seem to be a bit mixed up on Prions vs Diseases

Prions are misfolded proteins, they're not viruses, not bacteria, not parasites/protozoans they're just like the proteins that are everywhere except misfolded for some reason so they can't be used and they cause other proteins to be misfolded too.

Prion is the type of vector in this case, where the diseases are things like "Mad Cows Disease" "Creutzfeldt-Jakobs" "Kuru" All 3 of those are indeed caused by eating/ingesting infected tissue. Creutzfeldt-Jakobs is what happens when humans get Mad Cow Disease for instance, and Kuru is transmitted by cannibalism of humans, and is primarily found by eating brain tissue. Kuru is, or rather was prevalent in the Maori people in New Zealand for instance due to their ritualistic cannibalism they practiced.

Prions generally aren't genetic, but there's one in particular we believe is, and that's Fatal Familial Insomnia. Which is characterized by insomnia that gets progressively worse till you can't sleep, and it kills you eventually. FFI is incredibly, incredibly rare, and as I recall there's only like 20 cases worldwide.

The issue with prions is that they're not living things and just proteins are incredibly difficult to get rid of by conventional means. Like say you're performing surgery, and you need to clean a scalpel. You can stick the scalpel in an autoclave that'll superheat that metal till its about 1000F or so and that'll kill effectively all bacteria, and viruses that could be contaminating it. Prions on the other hand cannot be killed by conventional autoclave technology, it takes temperatures several magnitudes higher to completely scour proteins off that metal, and as such surgery involving people who have CDJ aka Jakobs requires complete disposal of surgical implements afterwards since it's next to impossible to sanitize them.

Either way this is kinda more wordy than usual, and it's been awhile since i've done virology studies, but that's the gist of Prions as a vector.

Prions take temperatures in excess of a thousand degrees to really be sure there's none left, because it only takes one of them to really screw you over.

Alrighty since people have asked you about where Answers plays, have you ever personally had the pleasure of participating in T13 while the song you sing plays?

It still strikes me as one of the most intense moments in video games i've ever had.

Generally its not so much consuming their own as consuming anything that has a high risk of being tainted with those prions. It's how Cows get Mad Cow Disease from the same Prion humans get Cruetzfeldt-Jakobs disease. Its the same misfolded protein that causes it, but it's manifested in different ways. Both of them get it from tainted beef as I recall. So yeah generally a cow that eats feed contaminated with meat from a cow that had Mad Cow Disease will pass it onto the cow eating that feed, and if a human eats that same meat we get CDJ

For reference you really don't want CDJ, which is why Europe had that big mad cow disease scare back in I think it was the 90's. Everyone was afraid to eat beef for awhile there due to the risk of the prion infecting people who ate tainted beef.

The way I understand it is generally if you're gonna cannibalize you're not supposed to eat brain tissue since that's the place where prions tend to do their thing even if they're not symptomatic currently cause they can take many years to show symptoms.