‘Mad Deer Disease’ No Threat Yet to U.S. – Panel. There’s a prion disease which causes a spongiform encephalopathy in Western U.S. populations of deer and elk; but is it a “transmissible spongiform encephalopathy” (TSE)? i.e. transmissible to humans, as is ‘Mad Cow Disease’ (bovine spongiform encephalopathy [BSE], the human expression of which causes a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease [CJD]). Do you think you should risk eating any elk meat or venison until we know for sure? Reuters