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judith richards wrote: > This is scary... > Brain illness kills man and his cat > > NEW YORK, Oct 02 (Reuters) -- Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) -- a > fatal, incurable brain disorder thought to be > caused by infectious particles called prions -- has claimed the life > of an Italian man and his pet cat, researchers report. I'll say it's scary! Here's a little background, but be warned; If you can't take real horror, better delete this message now. Creuzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) has been identified a long time, but is so rare that nobody knew or did much about it until about 1996, when cattle, and some people who ate them or worked in the butcher industry, started dying from Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis (BSE), named for the brain at autopsy being literally full of holes, like a sponge. Researchers soon suspected that BSE was the cause of Mad Cow Disease, where the the bovine victims aren't really mad, but so dazed that they just stagger about aimlessly until they fall down, for good. And also that CJD and BSE were caused by the same agent, transmitted by close contact or eating the contaminated meat. That news nearly wiped out the British beef industry that year. It seems that beef cattle were routinely fed supplements made from offal (odds and ends from slaughter) of sheep, goats, and other livestock which occasionally were infected with scrapie, a fatal disease in which the unfortunate animal scrapes its hide away on any handy rough object. Then scrapie also was quickly identified as a member of the CJD/BSE family. Authorities forbade such supplements in cattle feed, and beef raisers hoped the scare would blow over. Lab research has found that the prions, if they are the agent, remain virulent after ordinary autoclaving or antiseptic chemical treatment. Most infectious agents have evolved in a particular host species, and aren't easily transmitted to other species. So if BSE/CJD is so easily passed from livestock to humans, why is it still rare? Some researchers believe that prions aren't true living organisms like germs or viruses, but mere bits of protein that somehow become lethal and proliferate. That explains why they are so hard to "kill", but doesn't offer much hope for control. Sleep well. Joe J. R. Bruman (818) 789-3694 3527 Cody Road Sherman Oaks, CA 91403-5013