Medical Report: Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is the scientific name for “Mad Cow Disease”. This is a fatal disease that affects the brain and central nervous system of cows. The human form of mad cow disease is known as Creutzfeldt - Jakob disease (CJD). Even though the idea of becoming sick and dying from eating a sausage or a hamburger is pretty scary thought it should be noted that Creutzfeldt - Jakob disease is very rare and difficult to contract. It’s so rare that as of November 2006 there were only 200 individuals worldwide diagnosed with mad cow disease, including 164 people in the United Kingdom, 21 in France, 4 in the Republic of Ireland, the 3 in the US, 2 in the Netherlands, and 1 each in Canada, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, and Spain. (Kugler)
The disease first appeared in cows in Great Brittan in 1985 (Sheen, 2005). An eight year old cow trembled, lost weight, and showed aggressive behavior towards the farmer and other cows. No one could find what was wrong with her and without any sign of infection, it was impossible to determine what was causing the cow’s illness (Sheen, 2005). By 1987, 420 cows had died of the disease. Scientists then performed autopsies on the cattle. They discovered that all the cows had holes in their brain. The holes were spread although out the brain giving it the appearance of a sponge. These holes would eliminate brain cells and neurons, making it impossible to for messages to be transmitted to the body. (Sheen, 2005). The suspected cause was a transmitted in meat and bone meal products fed to cattle there, the government banned the practice of feeding such products that may contain diseased tissue to animals in 1988. By then, however, infected cattle had already entered the human food supply. (Wisniewski, 2005) In both humans and cows the symptoms can take from a few months to 30 or 40 years to submerge but the results are always fatal. (NINDS, 2009) At the longest death will occur within a year of the occurring symptoms.
