"Mad deer disease may spread with saliva"

Don't kiss a deer.

WASHINGTON - Deer probably spread a brain-destroying illness called chronic wasting disease through their saliva, concludes a study that finally pins down a long-suspected culprit. ...

Chronic wasting disease is in the same family of fatal brain illnesses as mad cow disease and its human equivalent. There is no evidence that people have ever caught chronic wasting disease from infected deer or elk.

But CWD is unusual because, unlike its very hard-to-spread relatives, it seems to spread fairly easily from animal to animal.

It's probably a good bet for hunters to be careful in areas where this disease has appeared, but why was this AP story written by a "medical writer"? Has anthropomorphization in the media gone so far that now human medicine and veterinary medicine are interchangeable in an editor's eyes? I hope not. I like my doctors and vets operating out of different buildings.