[extropy-chat] frequency of BSE and CJD greater than thought?

[Brian Atkins]

I don't find the hypothesis that there are many more BSE cases to be 
found lurking in "downer" cattle to be realistic since AFAIK the USDA 
here is now testing every single cow that displays such behavior (they 
claim they tested something like 20k cows in the last year I think) and 
so far has not found more than this one case announced yesterday.

As far as the two studies mentioned claiming that CJD is more widespread 
than believed - I don't see the connection between that and BSE, since 
the disease caused by eating BSE-infected meat products (keep in mind 
you would have to eat part of the spine or brain of the cow... muscle 
meats aren't affected) is a different disease, vCJD, which I don't see 
those studies mentioning.

Here's a little thing I found on Google explaining the difference:

http://www.brainandspine.org.uk/pdf/cjdpatients.pdf

There doesn't appear to be any large epidemic of vCJD, even in Europe... 
there have been articles I've read in New Scientist and other places in 
the past couple years commenting on this.
-- 
Brian Atkins
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/