Owing to the high oxygen-respiration in the brain of mammals, oxidative damage to prion protein hasbeen suggested to be an additional factor. A large body of intriguing features of scrapie and prion diseases haveprovided multiple lines of indirect chemistry evidence, suggesting that the infectious agents may be putative forms ofsequence-specific prion radicals (SSPR) and/or their immediate precursors in the transmissible spongiform encepha-lopathies (TSE). Here a molecular mechanism corresponding to the self-replication of scrapie protein mediated byprion free-radical processes, consonant with "protein-only" hypotheses is proposed. This new theory may not onlyaid our understanding of the occurrence of prions, but also provides new insight into the possible chemistry principlesunderlying the neurodegenerative disorders. It is anticipated that future studies based on this suggestion and chem-istry principles of genetic diseases may allow us to determine an effective approach to stop mad cow disease and itshuman version, new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (v CJD).