The human form of mad cow disease is a political issue

While scientists are still researching whether two or twenty genes increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease, other scientists and physicians are claiming that it's not only the genes, but also the environmental causes. If you want to read strictly nonfiction books on how food could be linked to brain diseases, see the book, Dying for a Hamburger: Modern Meat Processing and the Epidemic of Alzheimer's Disease, by Murray Waldman, M.D. and Marjorie Lamb.

Some physicians say they have reason to believe eating meat contributes not only to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of mad cow disease that's always fatal, but also Alzheimer's disease and related dementias not caused by specific, but common gene variants or other environmental toxins such as aluminum in the brain is the reason why half the US population over 85 loses their memories.

Is food related to the deep cognitive decline some people experience at various ages? One such issue is the increasing number of young as well as older people dying of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). The onset of vCJD often is either a young 24 -28 or in late middle age, at around 60+ rather than what people expect after age 85, when Alzheimer's or the many vascular dementias are more common. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) should be a political issue.

Mechanically recovered meat was served in schools in the UK during the 1980s. And many people eating that meat became avid blood donors. Neither the meat nor the blood had been tested. In how many other countries could similar scenarios have happened? It takes years for vCJD, the human and fatal form of mad cow disease to develop symptoms.

According to the article, "Campaign for vCJD blood screening," by Therasa Paul , published Sept. 2, 2009 in the Salisbury Journal (UK), a young woman in Fordingridge, UK, has set up a campaign to have all donated blood screened for the human form of mad cow disease called variant Cruetzfeld-Jakob disease (vCJD).

The young woman's grandmother, who ofen donated blood, died of vCJD. The big problem in the UK and in any other country is misdiagnose of Alzheimer's when the person diagnosed is really dying of CJD or vCJD.

In the UK, according to the article, "Campaign for vCJD blood screening," Lisa Farrant’s grandmother, Audrey Cook, died in 2007 at the age of 72 from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD). The grand daughter age 22, explained that her grandmother developed flu-like symptoms around Christmas, 2006, and then suddenly deteriorated until the grandmother's death in only six months.

What looked like the flu quickly turned the woman into a quadriplegic. The grandmother soon after went blind and then deaf. She showed no reactions to anything placed in front of her. She couldn't talk, smile, or communicate by April. Within four months from being healthy, the grandmother no longer could recognize her family members.

The mistaken diagnosis of Alzheimer's was put on her death certificate. While the grandmother was alive she was not diagnosed at all. But the family grew suspicious and post-mortem, asked for an autopsy, which revealed the grandmother had variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). Remember now, the grandmother was an avid blood donor for the past 40-50 years.

Her grand daughter blames mechanically recovered meat, according to the article, "which she claimed had been often used in meals served at schools in the 1980s, when her grandmother was a school cook."

Note the number of chefs and cooks dying with diagnosed CJD in the various obituaries. Is there some connection to the meat-based diets of some chefs and cooks, including school cooks?

How many other cases of blood donors are there who soon after giving blood began the symptoms that may be misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's but really is vCJD? In how many other nations can this happen?

If you get a blood transfusion from a blood donor with vCJD, the prions in the new blood with replicate and bring you down with vCJD. The disease transmits from animal to human by blood transfusions or eating meat carrying the prions that cause vCJD in humans and mad cow disease in animals, not just cows, but goats and sheep as well, if the animals are infected. The big question is if the animals are carrying even one prion, the prion will reproduce itself once in a human or animal host.

In the UK, CJD is not tested for when they screen blood donors. Few people have heard of the disease, and it could be misdiagnosed easily as Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia.

In the UK, there is no approved blood screening test for donated blood. In the USA, blood is screened for other communicable diseases such as HIV or hepatitis. But if a blood donor has early stage Alzheimer's in a diagnosis and donates blood, chances are the individual will not be screened for dementia, especially in the very early stages.

And if Alzheimer's is sometimes misdiagnosed when the person really has an early form of vCJD, that's one way the disease can get into the blood system. The other way is by eating meat containing the prions.

When tests are developed in the future, they need to be tested to see whether they are effective. It's not just older people thought to have Alzheimer's who have vCJD. It's young people as well who ate tainted meat in early childhood. In the USA as well as in the UK, there are numerous cases online and videos showing people in their twenties with vCJD.

In the USA, someone has to become a spokesperson for blood donations to be screened for vCJD. The place to start is by checking autopsies of people diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's when they die to find out whether they have had vCJD, and whether they were avid blood donors in the early stages of Alzheimer's or similar dementias.

If found blood donations, can be recalled. What the autopsies have to focus on is testing the spleens and tonsils where the disease-causing tiny protein prions collect. What doctors are looking for include white spots on tonsils, a history of sore throats, and other symptoms that could be other diseases, of course, but also could be the CJD prions. Only a test post-mortem, during an autopsy can tell for sure.

In the case of the grandmother mentioned in the article, "Campaign for vCJD blood screening," the grand daughter noted that her grandmother donated blood twice a year since the 1960s. It's a guess how many people might be infected with the prions, since they could take up to 30 years to develop symptoms.

The grand daughter has set up a Facebook page titled, Support Research into CJD. For further information, visit the campaign site at justice4andy.com:80.

The median age of death for persons with classic CJD is 68 years. But the median age of death for individuals with variant CJD is only 28 years. The Centers for Disease Control reports that infection with CJD disease usually leads to death within a year of the onset.

Can you 'catch' CJD from a skin graft, organ transplant, tooth implant, or other matter from a cadaver (recently deceased donor)? See the update regarding grafts. Update: Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease associated with cadaveric dura mater grafts--Japan, 1979-2003. No one knows for sure, of course. But the question remains: Why are so many talented, educated, and successful people dying from CJD even though CJD can cut across all levels of societies and can strike anyone? How come this rare brain disease isn't that rare anymore? What do scientists think the causes might be?

In Ashland, Oregon, on Monday evening, nearly 24 hours after a two-day benefit concert raised more than $25,000 for his medical bills and the support of his family, well-known Rogue Valley musical director and chorale leader, Dave Marston, 56, died in home hospice care from Creutzfeldt-Jakob, a rare brain disease, according to the Mail Tribune.

Are cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob increasing? Scientists would like it to be mandatory that all human and animal transmissible spongiform encephalopathy diseases, of all phenotypes, of all ages, in every state and internationally to be reported.

See the blog on Monitoring the Occurrance of Emerging Forms of CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob) Disease. Also see the research study, Neurology 2003;60:176-181 © 2003 American Academy of Neurology. The big issue to research is whether a person coming down in middle age or younger with a rare brain disease similar to mad cow disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (which always is fatal) has been caused by eating animal protein in the past or recently.

If dying in middle age, in your sixties, or before you're 28 of CJD is affecting the most brilliant people such as scientists, teachers, computer leaders, and economists, what's causing it? Who might be in denial? Is your profession relevant or not related to you getting CJD at any given age? And why is CJD called a one-in-a-million rare brain disease if so many prominent people in the news are dying of it?

What's going on? Anybody know? Could an animal or fish be a carrier of the prion? And could this animal or fish have eaten the rendered remains of another animal or fish that had been a carrier? All it takes is for one molecule of a prion to get inside you, and the prion will start to multiply.

Sure, it's scary. And nobody yet can confirm the causes and origins, but evidence is mounting along with theories. What's certain is that prion diseases in humans are being tabulated to see whether they're on the rise. And many of the published obituaries of people that died from CJD are online.

At least scientists are studying and reporting tables of statistics noting whether the disease is on the rise. These rare brain diseases caused by what scientists say are prions actually are on the rise. See the blog on the Meeting of TheTransmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies Committee On June 12, 2009.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the most common form of classic CJD is believed to be "sporadic and caused by the spontaneous transformation of normal prion proteins into abnormal prions." The CDC reports that about 85 percent of CJD cases are sporadic. According to the Centers for Disease Control, Classic CJD is a human prion disease. It is a neurodegenerative disorder with characteristic clinical and diagnostic features. This disease is rapidly progressive and always fatal. Infection with this disease leads to death usually within one year of onset of illness.

The Centers for Disease Control also makes an important note: Classic CJD is not related to "mad cow" disease. Classic CJD also is distinct from "variant CJD", another prion disease that is related to BSE. Mad cow disease is known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE.

The Centers for Disease Control site also states, "It also could be inherited in a smaller number of patients, around five to 15 percent. In the inherited variety of CDJ, people develop the disease due to inherited mutations of the prion protein gene."

Scientists are going to agree and disagree on many points, but the research is ongoing, and that's good for consumers to know, that somebody is looking into the matter. You can read the reports on limited bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) testing for mad cow disease in the High Plains/Midwest Agricultural Journal.

Ever since and long before the popular and excellent novel (a work of fiction) Brain Trust has been published, readers wanted to know whether it's based on real research or not. The book by Colm A. Kelleher Ph.D. has a subtitle: "The Hidden Connection between Misdiagnosed Alzheimer's and Mad Cow Disease." Are medical thrillers like some historical thrillers based on even a hint of truth or are they entirely fiction? A lot of readers think the medical thriller is more than fiction based on imagination. What do you think?

According to the review site, it's the "best medical thriller in years," and according to the Medical Post, April 2006, the novel is a medical detective story that traces the origin and spread of the deadly infectious prions that cause Mad Cow disease as they jumped species and ended up in America’s food supply.

The review site notes, "It also shows how human Mad Cow disease is hidden in the current epidemic of Alzheimer’s Disease. By exposing the devastating truth about Mad Cow Disease, including revealing a second prion epidemic in the nation’s deer, elk and other wildlife, Brain Trust inoculates Americans with an effective cure: The Truth."

Scientists know so far that there are two prion diseases. There are old and newer articles all over the online news sites asking whether mad cow disease is making its way into our meat.

Then there's the other prion disease, CJD. Where did that prion come from and how does it infect people? See the links at the bottom of this article on CJD, a fatal disease of humans that has similar symptoms to mad cow disease and always is fatal.

For example, read the Twin Falls Idaho, Times-News article by Sandy Miller, Fifth Woman Dies After Being Diagnosed with CJD. How did the cluster originate?

The article reports, "CJD is carried by prions, an abnormal form of protein in the bloodstream. Prions cause folding of normal protein in the brain, leading to brain damage. Symptoms include dementia and other neurological signs. Its victims typically die within four or five months after onset of the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

Did the women catch the disease from eating a meat-based diet or not? The article notes, "Health officials believe that all of the women had sporadic CJD and not the variant form of CJD that people get when they eat meat from a cow with bovine spongiform encephalopathy -- commonly known as mad cow disease."

According to the article, "All of the women were between the ages of 60 and 83. The average age of people who've died from sporadic CJD is 68. The average age of people who've died from the variant form of CJD is 28, according to the CDC."

So now the question is what causes the sporadic form of CJD? Scientists know one type of prion is the cause of CJD and another type of prion is the cause of mad cow disease (BSE). Where did either of those two prions originate? So far, nobody knows, and testing continues.

The problem is that this is not fiction from a novel. The article reports that, "However, the unusually high number of cases has drawn attention from state health officials as well as the CDC. Normally, the disease infects just one person per 1 million people worldwide a year. In Idaho, there are about three cases of CJD annually, and in recent years the United States has reported fewer than 300 cases of CJD a year, according to the CDC."

In Idaho, people are eating a lot of meat. Could meat be the culprit? And the testing and research continues.

A similar Times-News article, "Health officials investigate unusual cluster of CJD cases: Mad cow disease not suspected by Times-News writer, Sandy Miller, reporting on the same case of five women dying from CJD notes, "Laboratory results are pending on two of the women."

What do you think caused the cluster of CJD? Read Terry Singeltary's blog. His mother died from a rare phenotype of CJD, for example, the Heidenhain Variant of Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease. It's described as sporadic, simply meaning from an unknown route and source. Singeltery notes on his blog, "I have simply been trying to validate her death DOD 12/14/97 with the truth. There is a route, and there is a source."

Here's a statement to ponder, suggested by Terry Singletary, "Even if fish could not contract a Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy, it would still be possible for the TSE agent to survive the digestinal tract, and then if that fish was added as an ingredient for feed, the agent could further spread to infect other species."

Also see one of Terry Singletary's blog articles, Alzheimer's Disease is Transmissible. According to an article in the UK Guardian (June 7, 2009) noted on the blog, reference to that article, "Mice injected with Alzheimer's cast new light on dementia," revealed that, "Scientists have found that harmful tangles of proteins that cause diseases such as Alzheimer's can be transmitted from one brain to another, spreading and causing damage after being injected into the brains of mice. The researchers emphasized, however, that Alzheimer's was not contagious and said it could not be caught, for example, through blood transfusions."

Everyone wants to know whether eating lots of meat or farmed fish is or is not going to give them a rare brain disease. Scientists know a sporadic form of CJD comes from a different source than the usual mad cow disease that hits younger people, but they don't know what the origin of the disease is or where it's found.

What do veterinarians concerned about cancer in animals say? One veterinarian emailed me a letter that noted in part, "As a concerned veterinarian there is a topic that is not part of the zoonotic diseases that is talked about, and it needs to be--BLV, Bovine Leukemia Virus."

You might look at the Emily Project. The site notes, "While bovine leukemia virus is not the main cause nor the only cause of cancer, we can not ignore that BLV has been discovered in some female breast tissues."

The veterinarian wrote, "From this concern about cancer in animals, the Dr.DoMore documentary arose and evolved into the first Integrative Health Pet Expo. All of these efforts are to raise awareness and funds to have healthy sustainable green medicine that looks at all the healthiest option for ourselves and our animals. There needs to be conscious effort to bring information and make the changes to save our planet, ourselves and our animals."

There are new calls for research into the human form of mad cow disease – 13 years after the first confirmed death from the illness in Kent, UK. With an incubation period of up to 25 years, scientists believe thousands more people are set to die from vCJD, or variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Cases of vCJD are on the rise in the USA also. See the article, "How CJD Has Become A Hidden Killer."

Also see my article on USA-recalled blood donations as well as untested meat suspected of containing CJD prions. See: CJD found in recalled blood donations from USA & BSE untested meat. Why are untested donated blood products and/or cattle being exported? In the USA, the FDA recent noted there were numerous recent donated blood recalls.

Donated Blood from Person at Risk for vCJD in the USA Has Been Recalled After Being Exported

In the USA, the Enforcement Report for August 19, 2009 noted that the products include: 1) Red Blood Cells Leukocytes Reduced, Recall # B-1451-09; 2) Plasma Frozen, Recall # B-1452-09 CODE 1) and 2) Unit: W053308507669. The recalling firm/manufacturer is the Community Blood Center, Inc., Appleton, WI, notified of recall by letter or electronic notification on February 6, 2009. Firm initiated recall is complete.

The reason for the recall is the following: The blood products, collected from a donor who was at risk for variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), were distributed. The volume of the product in commerce, 2 units. Distribution was to Switzerland, AL.

FDA Enforcement Report August 12, 2009 (page 26,27) - The donated blood product was Recovered Plasma, Recall # B-1440-09, CODE Units: 7011314, 7007242. The recalling firm/manufacturer is: Florida's Blood Centers, Inc., Orlando, FL, by email on March 26, 2009. Firm initiated recall is complete. The reason is that the blood products, collected from a donor considered to be at increased risk for variant Creutzfeldt- Jakob Disease (vCJD), were distributed. The volume of the product in commerce is 2 units. Distribution of the blood product is Austria.

Another blood poduct, Recovered Plasma, Recall # B-1441-09, CODE Unit: 9523542, RECALLING FIRM/MANUFACTURER, Florida's Blood Centers, Inc., Orlando, FL, by fax on April 7, 2009. Firm initiated recall is complete. The reason for the recall is that the blood products, collected from a donor considered to be at increased risk for variant Creutzfeldt- Jakob Disease (vCJD), was distributed. The volume of the product in commerce is 1 unit. And the distribution is France.

The recalled blood products or meat for food consumption, also recalled all had possible ties to contamination with prion diseases, CJD or BSE. Blood donations and food safety are top priorities. Why are untested products escaping in the first place, and how often are they being recalled because of infection with prion, brain-wasting diseases that are always fatal?

There is no cure for the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), which forced cattle farmers in Kent to destroy thousands of animals in the 1990s.

This week scientists in the UK requested coroners performing autopsies take brain samples from every body to find out how many people are affected.

At present it is simply not known how many people are carrying the infection, although in the UK, Professor John Collinge, a member of the Government-appointed Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee, has said it could be as many as one person in every 1,000.

According to the article, How CJD Has Become A Hidden Killer, “There is a concern that what we have seen so far may be the first wave, occurring in individuals who are particularly genetically susceptible, but there may be more people who are silently infected in the community than the number of clinical cases we have seen would suggest,” Professor Collinge told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this week.

The article reported that, "Until the tests on dead bodies are put into place, the professor has warned there is no way to tell how many more people are likely to develop the disease, or whether the measures currently in place to prevent its spread are adequate or necessary.

To date four people have died after vCJD infected blood transfusions. In 2004, the Department of Health banned anyone who had been given a transfusion since 1980 from donating blood, a screening process costing millions of pounds and depriving the National Blood Service of 60,000 potential donors."

In the USA, who's investigating Creutzfeldt-Jakob (CJD) disease's possible causes? Why do chefs tend to get CJD--even if it's as rare in chefs as in anyone else? Home chef, 56, dies of CJD. Classic CJD isn't related to mad cow disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control, although both classic CJD and variant CJD are prion diseases. But variant CJD is related to mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE. Also see the Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) site. Could sporadic CJD possibly be caused by an external source, since it's found often in certain areas in clusters? Scientists are trying to answer such questions with research.

As for CJD, check out the Justice for Andy site, the mother of Andy reports, "On 16th December 2007 at just 24 years of age, my son Andy Black died after suffering from the human form of mad cows disease vCJD (variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease)."Andy worked in the media producing/researching programmes for talkSPORT Radio, BBC, and ITV.

His mother reports, "During his terrible last days and at his request I made it my mission to find out 'Who killed my son?' "And with the BBC, I have produced a documentary exposing the key players at the centre of the BSE crisis whose actions and decisions led to his untimely and avoidable death."

Watch the video at the Justice for Andy site about vCJD, which is the variant of CJD linked mad cow's disease in the UK. How do you explain to a parent when a young child dies from a rare brain disease caused by a prion, that's smaller than a virus?

The CJD Foundation according to their site, "contains information compiled with the needs of CJD patients and their families in mind. The CJD Foundation consists of members who want to support you through this experience." Also see History of...