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3) Hopkins Q&A: " Mad Cow Disease " Isn't Your Biggest Worry - Source:s

Hopkins Commentary

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, dubbed " Mad Cow Disease, " by the British

press, caused panic in England after scientists theorized a link between the

disease in cattle and an upswing in human cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease,

a fatal degenerative brain disease. The cattle disease may be the result of

their having been fed tissues from sheep contaminated by scrapie, another

spongiform encephalopathy disease. In March, the FDA proposed a ban on using

tissue from sheep or cattle in the animals' feed. But the links pose a

tenuous challenge for scientists; people don't get sick from eating lamb. And

sheep in Britain have scrapie while sheep in Australia don't; yet the rate of

CJD is the same in both countries. And vegetarians can get CJD, too. In this

interview with InteliHealth, T. , M.D., professor of

neurology, microbiology and neuroscience and director of neurology at the

s Hopkins Medical Institutions, explains the links between the diseases,

while cautioning that the risks of contracting CJD from meat is minute and

unproven.