Mad cows, cannibalism and the shaking death

The new film We Are What We Are is about a family of cannibals, one of whom succumbs to a human form of mad cow diseaseI made a brief appearance on HuffPostLive on Wednesday, to talk about kuru, a human form of mad cow disease' that is transmitted by eating infected nervous tissue. It was for a segment of the broadcast featuring cast members of We Are What We Are, a new film about a family of cannibals, one of whom succumbs to the disease.Kuru and other human forms of mad cow disease are extremely rare neurodegenerative conditions, but they occasionally make the headlines when new cases are found. The latest case was reported earlier this month - that of a New Hampshire man who contracted variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) via contaminated neurosurgical instruments. The same disease claimed the lives of 156 British people during the late 1990s, all of whom had eaten infected beef. Consequently, the European Commission imposed a worldwide ban on British beef, and the British government ordered the culling of hundreds of thousands of cows in order to contain the disease. Since then, no cases have arisen from the consumption of infected beef. Nevertheless, research suggests that kuru, vCJD and other related diseases could have incubation periods of at least several decades, and perhaps up to 50 years. Some researchers therefore argue that many more people may have been exposed to infected beef in the UK during the 90s, and that there may be a looming epidemic of vCJD. Read...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Tags: theguardian.com Blogposts Neuroscience Source Type: news