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News & Analysis | REG•WATCH Blog | Press Room
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
"Atypical Mad Cow" Not a Surprise, After All
Reports of an atypical strain of mad cow disease need not have come as such a surprise, according to the folks who publish PR Watch:
The small scientific world of prion researchers -- the scientists who investigate "transmissible spongiform encephalopathies" (TSE) such as mad cow disease in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) in humans -- is abuzz. That's because the two confirmed cases of US mad cow disease in Texas and Alabama are an "atypical" strain different from the British strain. This really should not be surprising. Sheldon Rampton and I reported in 1997 that very strong evidence of an "atypical" TSE disease in US cattle goes back to the 1985 work of Dr. Richard Marsh, the researcher to whom we dedicated our book Mad Cow USA. Even before Britain confirmed its first case of mad cow, Marsh was investigating a similar disease he traced to Wisconsin dairy cattle, confirming suspicions among US scientists since the 1960s that a deadly TSE disease in mink -- transmissible mink encephalopathy or TME -- resulted from their eating dairy cattle.
[Via Center for Media and Democracy - Publishers of PR Watch]
Posted by Robert Shull
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