usual suspect wrote:

> Associated Press
> HOUSTON — A man from Great Britain who lived in Houston for four years
> has been diagnosed with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human
> form of mad cow disease, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control confirmed
> today.
>
> The 30-year-old man was diagnosed with the second U.S. case of variant
> Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease because his symptoms began while he lived in
> Houston.
>
> Earlier this year, he returned to Great Britain, where his disease
> progressed and he is now receiving medical treatment for the fatal illness.
>
> The U.K. National Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance Unit in
> Edinburgh, Scotland, informed the Atlanta-based CDC of the probable
> variant CJD diagnosis and told the disease center the case would need to
> be reported as a U.S. case.
>
> The man was born in the United Kingdom and lived there from 1980-1996, a
> period during which those living in the country were at risk of exposure
> to beef products infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, more
> commonly known as mad cow disease.
>
> The infected man's temporary stay in the U.S. has been deemed "too brief
> relative to what is known about the incubation period for variant CJD,"
> the CDC said. It is believed he was infected in the United Kingdom
> because the disease's incubation period can last years, sometimes
> decades....
>
> A total of 185 people from 11 countries have been diagnosed with variant
> CJD since 1996. A majority of the cases — 158 — have been diagnosed in
> Great Britain, 15 in France, three in Ireland and two in the United
> States. Canada, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Saudi Arabia
> and Spain have each also reported a case.
>
> The initial U.S. case involved a woman from Great Britain who was living
> in Florida. She died last year, Schonberger said.
>
> "They have been having cases in the United Kingdom on a regular basis,"
> he said. "From our perspective, this is just the continuation of the
> ongoing outbreak in the United Kingdom."
>
> Rest of article:
> http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printsto...onicle/3476565
> ---------------------------------------
> Note to Beach Bungler Bob: 185 cases over ~10 years isn't an outbreak,
> an epidemic, or the tip of some kind of iceberg. It's no doubt a
> tragedy, but it's very much isolated both geographically (85.4% of all
> diagnosed in the UK, and 100% of US reported cases involved Britons as
> well; the UK's population is 0.94% of the world's population) and to a
> specific time frame (1980-1996). The number of new cases in the UK
> continues to *decline*, which isn't what one would expect if it were the
> tip of some iceberg.
>
We don't know the full extent, or how contaminated the bovine food
supply was and is for how many years. The long period it takes to emerge
makes it impossible to predict the full outbreak.


> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...610802,00.html
> http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ew/2004/040513.asp#3