I'm putting this in here because this excellent topic seems the right place:
This morning, BBC news carried an interview with a freelance journalist whose son, a former radio presenter, had died from vCJD - a degenerative brain condition whose cause seems allied with the BSE cattle scare which appeared in the 1980s. She's published an E-book, called
'Who Killed My Son?', the result of some five years of investigation into CJD.
The sales of Beef dropped dramatically when the BSE scare first appeared (and probably plummeted once the Government told us it was safe to eat), but the
facts are extremely worrying. Briefly, The consumption of food of bovine origin contaminated with the agent of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), a disease of cattle, has been strongly linked to the occurrence of vCJD in humans. 175 cases of vCJD were reported in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (United Kingdom), and 49 cases in other countries from October 1996 to March 2011.
(from the WHO).
The US has active bans in force that stop anyone who has spent three months or more in the UK from giving blood, so they view the possible threat very seriously. I've included links (above) to several articles about the condition, but there are two very worrying facts: the incubation period seems to be between 40 and 50 years, although it can be much less, meaning that almost anyone over the age of 15 in the UK might be carrying the condition. The second worry is that a study by the
Health Protection Agency in 2012 shows that around
1 in 2000 people in the UK shows signs of vCJD infection.
As if this cheery news wasn't enough, it's worth remembering that there is currently no effective treatment for this fatal disease, and - even more worrying - certain vaccines used in the UK have been derived from suspected BSE-infected cattle.