Humans and the Mad Cow Disease

Mad cow disease is a brain-wasting illness that affects cattle. Discovered in the UK in 1986 and spreading to Europe and Asia, mad cow disease has caused the near collapse of the European beef industry by destruction of entire herds as a way to combat the disease.

Mad cow disease is caused not a bacteria or virus. In fact, prions, or proteins, that primarily affect the brain, cause mad cow. This has a similar form in sheep called scrapie, in which infected sheep acted in a bizarre manner, scratching an insatiable itch in their drying mouths. In either case, dead animals are found to have brains with holes, just like sponges, prompting experts to call it "spongiform encelopathy", or bovine spongiform encelopathy (BSE) in the case of cows. Traditional ways to destroy microbes do not work with prions, hence contributing to the spread of the disease.

The cause of much scare about mad cow disease is its possibility to be transmitted to humans. In humans, the disease causes a variant called Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (CJD), a degenerative, and fatal brain disorder. There is no cure for this disease, and patients often die in a few months. Fortunately, CJD is not contagious, and normally arises from unintended consequences of medical procedures.

CJD normally affects the elderly, however a recently discovered variant called vCJD (which stands for variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease), affects people of a younger age, even teenagers. This form of the disease is strongly linked to mad cow.

In humans, CJD manifests in psychiatric symptoms, such as depression or anxiety, or less commonly, a schizophrenia-like psychosis. As CJD progresses, a patient develops involuntary jerks, and may go blind. The patient goes on a coma, and dies. The only way to determine CJD is through brain biopsy or autopsy.

Since CJD is incurable, the best way to combat the disease is through prevention. The only way to prevent CJD is to know for sure the sources of one's beef. Cattle should be purely fed with plants, and not with feeds mixed with dead cows. Beef consumption must be discontinued when cases of mad cow appear in your area.