On Mon, 5 Jan 2004 03:00:20 -0600, "Jeff" > wrote:

>
>"Rubystars" > wrote in message
gy.com...

>> There's been speculation that many of the people who were diagnosed with
>> Alzheimer's in the US may have actually had CJD. I thought I read
>>something
>> about the brains of people who had died from Alzheimer's being studied and
>> the ones doing it finding out they had died of CJD, but I can't remember
>> where the article is now.

>There is no proof what so ever that those inflicted with Alzheimer's had in
>fact CJD.

We must be careful not to mix up things. There is a disease we can call
CJD (classical CJD), and another distinct from it, called vCJD (variant
CJD). Undoubtedly there have been people diagnosed with Alzheimer's
who really died from CJD, but not likely any from vCJD. vCJD affects
relatively young people.

>There was one cow found to be diseased. They said millions would
>die in England when they had their scare and they had thousands of diseased
>cattle. <snip>

Pointedly one could say some said there was only a relatively few BSE
clinical cases at one stage during the UK epizootic , with the case
number appearing to be leveling out at a low prevalence. Downplaying
it, so maybe it was no big deal, one could wait and see. However, they
were sitting on a huge number of subclinical cases, the proverbial
hidden part of the ice-berg they just could not see yet, and we are to
be happy that some were sufficiently foresighted to act accordingly.

It is difficult to come to terms with a disease with long incubation,
and more so, when the disease is new. When vCJD first emerged it was
known that people in England had eaten 100s of thousands of subclinical
BSE affected cattle. Necessarily any reasonably estimated ranges for
the possible scope of the newly discovered disease would have to be
wide. In either case complacency, leaning to the low end would have to
be out of the question.