Arcas0

I have had two grandparents on dialysis, so I know how much it sucks. You go in every other day and sit in a chair for 4 hours getting blood pumped out of you. Miss a day, you get real sick. Miss a week, you are dead. Your whole life basically revolves around this one illness. Transplants aren't all fun and games either. One grandparent got one, but you need special diets and awful immunosuppressant drugs. A simple cold sends you to the hospital.

Exactly. Are we talking http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5227/5647600551_d99ba7a597.jpg

or

http://www.adventuresofaglutenfreemom.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/nilla-wafers.jpg

The fact that you die a sad, slow death of about a month where your brain degenerated to the level of an infant, and it is completely 100% incurable.

If your father contracted the disease from a genetic defect that made him more likely to create the prion, then it would be genetic, but if he contracted it from an outside source such as eating tainted flesh, it would have no way of passing to you. Prions can only be transferred from person to person through cannibalism.

They aren't technically alive. It's actually just a small protein in the brain that folds incorrectly. Almost like cancer, but just tiny chemical compounds.