- I Don't Want to Skeer Ya' Now... but it is Time to Check-in on the Continuing Study of Incalculable Odds
- Even if your Brain is made of lead, it cannot escape this "Encephalopathy" --and--
- How is the rise of evidence of BSE connected to decline in Autopsies?
- Excerpts retrieved by Pat Darnell | [HERE]
Could Mad Cow Disease Already be Killing Thousands of Americans Every Year?by Michael Greger, M.D. | Originally Published Wed., 01.07.2004 at CommonDreams.org
October 2001, 34-year-old Washington State native Peter Putnam started losing his mind. One month he was delivering a keynote business address, the next he couldn't form a complete sentence. Once athletic, soon he couldn't walk. Then he couldn't eat.
After a brain biopsy showed it was Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, his doctor could no
longer offer any hope. "Just take him home and love him," the doctor counseled his family. Peter's tragic death, October 2002, may have been caused by Mad Cow disease.Mad Cow disease is caused by unconventional pathogens called prions--literally infectious proteins-- which, because of their unique structure, are practically invulnerable, surviving even incineration at temperatures hot enough to melt lead. *[HUNjH??!]It is now considered an "incontestable fact" that these human deaths in Britain were caused by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), or Mad Cow disease. Bovine means "cow or cattle," spongiform means "sponge-like," and encephalopathy means "brain disease."
- Seven years earlier and 5000 miles away, Stephen Churchill was the first in England to die. His first symptoms of depression and dizziness gave way to a living nightmare of terrifying hallucinations; he was dead in 12 months at age 19.
- Next was Peter Hall, 20, who showed the first signs of depression around Christmas, 1994. [ ... ]
- Then it was Anna's turn, then Michelle's. Michelle Bowen, age 29, died in a coma three weeks after giving birth to her son via emergency cesarean section.
The leading theory as to how cows got Mad Cow disease in the first place is by eating diseased sheep infected with a sheep spongiform encephalopathy called scrapie.In humans, prions can cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a human spongiform encephalopathy whose clinical picture can involve weekly deterioration into blindness and epilepsy as one's brain becomes riddled with tiny holes.
Autopsy rates have dropped in the U.S. from 50% in the Sixties to less than 10% at present.
- We've known about Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease for decades, since well before the first mad cow was discovered in 1985.
- Some cases of CJD seemed to run in families; other cases seemed to just arise spontaneously in about one in a million people every year, and were hence dubbed "sporadic."
- The new form of CJD caused by eating beef from cows infected with Mad Cow disease, though, seemed to differ from the classic sporadic CJD.
Although one reason autopsies are rarely performed on atypical dementia cases is that medical professionals are afraid of catching the disease, the primary reason for the decline in autopsy rates in general appears to be financial.
There is currently no direct reimbursement to doctors or hospitals for doing autopsies, which often forces the family to absorb the cost of transporting the body to an autopsy center and having the brain samples taken, a tab that can run upwards of $1500.
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