"Jeff" > wrote in message ...
>
> "Rubystars" > wrote in message
> y.com...
> >
> > "Bill" > wrote in message
> > t...
> > > Is it still only one cow that has been found in the United States to have
> > > the disease? I mean, the article (what of it I read, it was very boring)
> > > made it sound as if the was some actual danger. Maybe thousands were
> > > found to be infected and I didn't read about it yet?
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > -Rubystars
> >
> There is no proof what so ever that those inflicted with Alzheimer's had in
> fact CJD. 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. They had a couple of deaths there. More liberal media hocus pocus.
> We had one cow in Canada and not one illness. These **** wads in the media
> don't care how they sell papers or get ratings.
>
> Jeff

Alzheimer's And CJD Scientifically Linked
By Michael Greger
12-29-03

(First published 6-16-96)

If indeed a form of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)
exists in the United States, one might expect to see a rise in the
number of cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). CJD,
however, is not a reportable illness in this country (Holman, 1995).
Because the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) does not actively
monitor the disease (Altman, 1996d) a rise similar to the one in
Britain could be missed (Altman, 1996d). Already, a number of
U.S. CJD clusters have been found. In the largest known U.S.
outbreak of sporadic cases to date(Flannery, 1996) a five-fold
expected rate was found to be associated with cheese
consumption in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley (Little, 1993) A
striking increase in CJD was also reported in Florida (Berger,
1994) and there is an anecdotal report of an cluster in Oregon
(Boule, 1996). An analysis of death certificates in a number of
states, though, showed an overall stable and typical CJD
incidence rate from 1979 to 1993 (World, 1996). To track the
disease, the CDC has just initiated a four-state study of death
certificates (Altman, 1996a), but since it is considered well
known that death-certificate diagnoses are not always accurate
(Davanpour, 1993) the survey may not provide an accurate
assessment.

The true prevalence of prion diseases in this or any other
country remains a mystery (Harrison, 1991). Compounding
the uncertainty, autopsies are rarely performed on atypical
dementias (Harrison, 1991), because medical professionals
fear infection (Altman, 1996a). The officially reported rate
in this country is less than 1 case in a million people per year
(World, 1996). An informal survey of neuropathologists,
however, registered a theoretical range of 2-12% of all
dementias as actually CJD (Harrison, 1991). And hundreds
of thousands of Americans suffer from severe dementias
every year (Brayne, 1994; United, 1995). Two other studies
average about a 3% CJD rate among dementia patients
(Mahendra, 1987; Wade, 1987). A preliminary 1989
University of Pennsylvania study showed that 5% of patients
diagnosed with dementia were actually dying from
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (Boller, 1989). It would seem
CJD is seriously underdiagnosed at present (Harrison, 1991).

The most common misdiagnosis of CJD is Alzheimer's
disease (Harrison, 1991). CJD was even described by
our government's top CJD researcher (Wlazelek, 1990a)
as "Alzheimer's in fast forward (Wlazelek, 1990b)." The
symptoms and pathology of both diseases overlap (Brown,
1989). There can be spongy changes in Alzheimer's, for
example, and senile plaques in CJD (Brown, 1989). The
causes may overlap as well; epidemiological evidence
suggests that people eating meat more than four times a
week for a prolonged period have a three times higher
chance of suffering a dementia than long-time vegetarians
(Giem, 1993), although this result may be confounded by
vascular factors (Van Duijn, 1996).

Paul Brown, medical director for the U.S. Public Health
Service (Gruzen, 1996), said that the brains of the young
people who died from the new CJD variant in Britain even
look like Alzheimer's brains (Hager, 1996). Stanley Prusinger,
the scientist who coined the term prion, speculates Alzheimer's
may in fact turn out to be a prion disease (Prusiner, 1984). In
younger victims the disease could look like multiple sclerosis
or a severe viral infection, according to Alzheimer's expert
Gareth Roberts (Brain, 1996).

An estimated two to three million Americans are afflicted by
Alzheimer's (Scully, 1993); it is the fourth leading cause of
death among the elderly in the U.S (Perry, 1995). Twenty
percent or more of people clinically diagnosed with Alzheimer's
disease are found at autopsy to not have had Alzheimer's at all
(McKhann, 1984). At Yale, out of 46 patients clinically
diagnosed with Alzheimer's, 6 were proven to be CJD at
autopsy (Manuelidis, 1989). In another post-mortem study 3
out of 12 "Alzheimer" patients actually died from a spongiform
encephalopathy (Teixeira, 1995).

Carleton Gajdusek, who was awarded a Nobel Prize for his
work with prion diseases (Manuelidis, 1985), estimates that
1% of people showing up in Alzheimer clinics actually have
CJD (Folstein, 1983). That means that hundreds* of people
(Hoyert, 1996; United, 1995) may already be dying from
mad cow disease each year in the United States.


WORKS CITED

Altman, Lawrence K. "Four States Watching for Brain
Disorder." New York Times, 9 April 1996a.

Altman, Lawrence K. "U.S. Officials Confident That Mad
Cow Disease of Britain Has Not Occured Here." New York
Times, 27 March 1996d: 12A.

"Apocalypse Cow: U.S. Denials Deepen Mad Cow Danger."
PR Watch, 3.1 (1996): 1-8

Berger, Joseph R., et al. "Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease: A
Ten-Year Experience." Neurology, 44 (1994): A260.

Bleifuss, Joel. "Killer Beef." In These Times, 31 May 1993: 12-15.

Boller, F., O. L. Lopez, and J. Moossy. "Diagnosis of Dementia.
" Neurology, 38 (1989): 76-79.

Boule, Margie. "Despite Anectdotal Evidence, Docs Say No
Mad Cow Disease Here." Oregonian, 16 April 1996: C01.

"Brain Disease May Be Commoner Than Thought - Expert."
Reuter Information Service, 15 May 1996.

Brayne, C. "How Common are Cognitive Impairment and
Dementia?" Dementia and Normal Aging, Canbridge: University
Press, 1994.

Brown, Paul. "Central Nervous System Amyloidoses."
Neurology, 39 (1989): 1103-1104.

Davanpour, Zoreth, et al. "Rate of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
in USA." Neurology, 43 (1993): A316.

Flannery, Mary. "Twelve - Fifteen 'Mad Cow' Victims a Year
in Area." Philadelphia Daily News, 26 March 1996: 03.

Folstein, M. "The Cognitive Pattern of Familial Alzheimer's
Disease." Biological Aspects of Alzheimer's Disease. Ed. R.
Katzman. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1983.

Gruzen, Tara. "Sheep Parts Fail to Cause Mad Cow Disease
in U. S. Test." Seattle Times, 29 March 1996: A11.

Hager, Mary and Mark Hosenball. "'Mad Cow Disease' in
the U.S.?" Newsweek, 8 April 1996:58-59.

Harrison, Paul J., and Gareth W. Roberts. "'Life, Jim, But
Not as We Know It'? Transmissible Dementias and the Prion
Protein." British Journal of Psychiatry, 158 (1991): 457-70.

Holman, R. C., et al. "Edidemiology of Creutzfeldt-Jakob
Disease in the United States, 1979-1990." Neuroepidemiology,
14 (1995): 174-181.

Hoyert, Donna L. "Vital and Health Statistics. Mortality
Trends for Alzheimer's Disease, 1979-1991." Washington:
U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, 1996.

Little, Brian W., et al. "The Epidemiology of Creutzfeldt-Jakob
Disease in Eastern Pennsylvania." Neurology, 43 (1993): A316.

Mahendra, B. Dementia, Lancaster: MTP Press Limited,
1987: 174.

Manuelidis, Elias E. "Presidential Address." Journal of
Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology, 44 (1985): 1-17.

Manuelidis, Elias E. and Laura Manuelidis. "Suggested Links
between Different Types of Dementias: Creutzfeldt-Jakob
Disease, Alzheimer Disease, and Retroviral CNS Infections."
Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders, 2 (1989): 100-109.

McKhann, Guy., et al. "Clinical Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease."
Neurology, 34 (1984): 939.

Prusiner, S. "Some Speculations about Prions, Amyloid, and
Alzheimer's Disease." New England Journal of Medicine, 310
(1984): 661-663.

Perry, R.T., et al. "Human Prion Protein Gene: Two Different
24 BP Deletions in an Atypical Alzheimer's Disease Family."
American Journal of Medical Genetics, 60 (1995): 12-18.

Scully, R. E., et al. "Case Records of the Massachusetts
General Hospital." New England Journal of Medicine, 29 April
1993: 1259-1263.

Teixeira, F., et al. "Clinico-Pathological Correlation in Dementias."
Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, 20 (1995): 276-282.

United States Department of Commerce. Statistical Abstract
of the United States, Washington: Bureau of the Census, 1995.

Van Duijn, C. M. "Epidemiology of the Dementia: Recent
Developments and New Approaches." Neuroepidemiology,
60 (1996): 478-488.

Van Duijn, C. M. "Epidemiology of the Dementia: Recent
Developments and New Approaches." Neuroepidemiology,
60 (1996): 478-488.

Wade, J. P. H., et al. "The Clinical Diagnosis of Alzheimer's
Disease." Archives of Neurology, 44 (1987): 24-29.

Wlazelek, Ann. "Fatal Brain Disease Mystifies Experts."
Morning Call, 23 September 1990a: B01.

Wlazelek, Ann. "Scientists Try to Track Fatal Disease;
International Expert Visits Area to Study Unusual Incedence
Rate." Morning Call, 27 September 1990b: B04.

"World Health Organization Consultatoin on Public Health
Issues Related to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and
the Emergence of a New Variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob
Disease.", Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 12
April 1996: 295-303.

http://www.cyber-dyne.com/~tom/Alzhe...d.html#and%20C

*
'Currently four million Americans are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
The percentage of cases is on the rise with solid research showing that
there are about 360,000 individuals newly diagnosed each year.

At Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania at Pittsburgh,
researchers recently studied the brains of people who died of Alzheimer's
disease (46 in the Yale case and 54 in the Pittsburgh study). Surprisingly,
the autopsies respectively showed that 13 percent and five percent of the
dead were actually CJD cases misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's disease.

In a third (smaller) study published in the Journal of Psychiatry and
Neuroscience (1995), investigators reported that three out of 12 patients
diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease were found to have had CJD when
autopsied. It should be noted CJD symptoms may be remarkably similar
to those of Alzheimer's disease.

There are no accurate figures for the total number of U.S. Alzheimer's
deaths each year, simply because it doesn't usually get reported as the
cause of death. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported only
22,725 Alzheimer's deaths in 1998. However, a spokesperson for the
National Alzheimer's Association, in a recent interview, agreed that the
actual number could easily be 100,000, or even has high as 400,000
per year. Because Alzheimer's patients usually die within 8 to 10 years,
she agreed that the CDC numbers must be grossly understated. If new
research supports that approximately 10 percent of all Alzheimer's
disease related deaths are in fact misdiagnosed CJD cases, then 10,000
to 40,000 CJD deaths will suddenly appear in America each year.
That would be an epidemic. '
http://www.parkc.org/Madcow_veggies.html