Idaho Probes Sudden Deaths From Rare Brain Disease

[beam me up scottie]

Idaho probes sudden deaths from rare brain disease
Mon Aug 15, 2005 6:24 PM ET

TWIN FALLS, Idaho (Reuters) - In late May Marjorie Skinner played golf well enough to place fourth in a Memorial Day weekend golf tournament. Yet within weeks, the previously vibrant retiree suddenly started losing her ability to speak.

By the time her family buried her on Friday, she was the fifth suspected victim in the same sparsely populated area of Idaho of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a rare brain-wasting disease that typically afflicts only one in a million people.

As word of this latest death spread on Monday, local and federal health experts sifted through clues about an illness different from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the human form of mad cow disease.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=healthNews&storyID=2005-08-15T222359Z_01_HO580619_RTRIDST_0_HEALTH-IDAHO-DC.XML

[yorkiemommie1]

1. my coworker told me that her husband died of this

here in SoCal.

[kestrel91316]

2. Time to start testing ALL cattle in the US for EVERY known strain of BSE.

Remember, variant-CJD is just a "variant" of CJD. There are several strains of BSE in cattle and there is no reason to think there are NOT several strains in humans. The common thread, IMHO, is that they are ALL prion diseases, and we know full well how they spread.

And I have my own very strong suspicions about the etiology of Alzheimer's Disease, too.

DON'T EAT THE BEEF.

[trotsky]

3. It helps to read the article and not get all boogedy-woogedy.

Experts say they do not expect to find a link to eating meat, although locals are asking if there is any connection to the human variant of mad cow disease.

...

The Centers for Disease Control estimate that spontaneous flaws in cell proteins result in 85 percent of CJD cases. Another 5-15 percent comes from genetic inheritance, leaving just a small percentage of other unexplained cases.