[Vision2020] 9 Cases of Brain-Wasting Disease in Idaho

[Phil Nisbet]

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/cjd/detail_cjd.htm

Not to put to fine a point on it Dick, BSE is not TSE.  You can get 
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from a whole lot of things, including simply being 
unlucky enough to get it genetically, but its not Mad Cow derived.  All of 
the suspected cases in Idaho you refer to are for TSE, in people in later 
life and not the younger folks who are suspected of getting BSE.

It looks like your AP article is alarmist in not pointing out that the TSE 
related Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is completely unrelated to Prion's found 
in Mad Cow's Disease.  The people involved are more likely to have recieved 
human growth hormones, a cornea transplant, or some other procedure which 
made them vulnerable to the kinds of prion degenerative action which lead to 
their deaths.  You can even note that two of those actually checked were 
determined not to have TSE at all, but more likely suffered from some other 
form of dementia, meaning that you only have three confirmed actual cases, 
four possible cases and two which were not cases at all in your list of 
nine.  So of the three, which had a a possible link to genetic CJD or the 
other two possible forms?

So perhaps, since the CDC does not think that its related to anything is 
reason to assume that reality is that its only three cases and that those 
three cases are typical of mormative TSE related CJD?  That sems most likely 
and therefore not cause to go on an anti-Beef campaign.

Phil Nisbet

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