Keeping the Mad Cows at Bay
Source: Philip Yam, Scientific American, July, 2002, 287(1):38-39.
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow disease or BSE, emerged in the 1980s in Britian. In 1989, the United States banned the import of beef from Britain and has been monitoring cases of the disease since 1990. It is believed that the disease was spread into cattle by sheep, whose corpses had been ground into feed, which were fed to cattle. BSE can infect humans the same way it infected cattle, by ingestion, but the disease in humans is called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. There have been cases of this in the U.S. though they are very rare. The first of these cases was a woman in April of 2002, who had previously lived in the United Kingdom. It is most likely that she was infected in the UK then after moving to the U.S. her symptoms became evident.
Linda Detwiler is the coordinator of U.S. BSE surveillance. Her branch of the APHIS monitors the infection of sheep, deer, and elk with transmissible spongiform encephalopathy. This is done by a simple urine test. The procedure is performed on 5,000 to 12,500 high-risk animals per year.
After learning a little of its history and how we are trying to prevent it from spreading, I am sure you are wondering �What is mad cow disease?�. First of all mad cow disease effects the brain, the main center of the nervous system. In its beginning stages it can cause mild forgetfulness to extreme forgetfulness. In later stages it causes physical pains from various parts of the body, amnesia, and complications with important body systems. This disease is always fatal. There is no cure for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. CJ disease works its way into the brain and �eats� holes in it, this causes the persons brain to have the consistency of a sponge or full of holes. That is why part of the name for the cow disease is spongiform. When looked at under a microscope a piece of an infected brain looks like a piece of swiss cheese.
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