States attack deadly deer disease.

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In an effort to contain the chronic wasting disease (CWD) afflicting deer and elk across the United States, thousands of captive elk have been killed in Colorado and other states. Wisconsin set a special summer season when hunters were asked to kill 25,000 deer in a 389-square-mile eradication zone in the southern part of the state to help thin the herds.

Wild deer and elk and animals in some captive herds in Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma and South Dakota, as well as Alberta and Saskatchewan, have been diagnosed with the disease.

CWD destroys the brains of deer, elk, moose and caribou; the animals become emaciated, act abnormally, lose coordination and die. How the disease is transmitted is unknown.

"There is no vaccine, and it is incurable once an animal contracts it," says Brent Manning, director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

CWD is a one of the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies diseases that include Creutzfeldt-Jakob in humans and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease). To date, it does not appear that CWD can be transmitted to humans.

Despite efforts to reduce exposure to sick animals, wild deer in Illinois and captive elk in Minnesota...