April 18, 2009, AZ Republic – A prominent Phoenix lawyer has died of an apparent case of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which is so rare it literally strikes one in a million.
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T. Michael Daggett, 63, who had worked at the Phoenix law firm Stinson Morrison Hecker for seven years, died April 11 at his home in Paradise Valley.
http://www.repguardian.com/phoenix-lawyer-dies-of-rare-brain-disease
By Whitney McFerron
Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) — Canada confirmed the 15th case of mad-cow disease discovered in the country since May 2003, this time in a dairy cow from British Columbia.
No part of the seven-year-old cow got into systems that produce food for consumption by either people or animals, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said today in a statement. The agency has identified where the animal was born and is looking for the source of its disease, the statement said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=aG0KdKYmyEuE&refer=canada
WASHINGTON, Aug 28, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ — Blood transfusions are a valuable treatment mechanism in modern medicine, but can come with the risk of donor disease transmission. Researchers are continually studying the biology of blood products to understand how certain diseases are transmitted in an effort to reduce this risk during blood transfusions. According to a study in sheep prepublished online in Blood, the official journal of the American Society of Hematology, the risk of transmitting bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, commonly known as “mad cow disease”) by blood transfusion is surprisingly high.
July 30, 2008 on 11:50 am | By beth | In Food Safety |
A recent audit of the USDA Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) revealed that cows from Canada have been entering the country without being properly inspected. Consequently, concerns have been raised that mad cow disease may have been imported along with the undocumented cows. And because the Bush Administration does not want meatpackers conducting their own private testing for mad cow disease, this threat to public health/food safety is simply a disaster waiting to happen.* Further complicating matters, the under-funded and understaffed USDA has no idea where these cows have ended up because of record-keeping errors made by APHIS.
http://www.animalwelfareapproved.org/blog/2008/07/30/is-the-us-importing-mad-cow-disease/
Dead man’s brain tested for mad cow disease
© 2008 The Associated Press
Annette Rodriguez, interim director of the Corpus Christi-Nueces County Health District, said the district was notified in early July by officials from a Corpus Christi hospital that a patient may have had Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Results of a brain biopsy are expected in two months to confirm whether the man had the disease and if it is the variant linked to mad cow.
http://justanotherwillyloman.blogspot.com/2008/07/harpers-new-shoot-shut-up-and-shovel.html
Ten people die from new CJD-like disease
09 July 2008
From New Scientist Print Edition.
Andy Coghlan
A NEW form of fatal dementia has been discovered in 16 Americans, 10 of whom have already died of the condition. It resembles Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease – with patients gradually losing their ability to think, speak and move – but has features that make it distinct from known forms of CJD.
No one yet knows how the disease originates, or under what conditions it might spread. Nor is it clear how many people have the condition. “I believe the disease has been around for many years, unnoticed,” says Pierluigi Gambetti, director of the US National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Cases may previously have been mistaken for other forms of dementia.
CBC News
Researchers in the U.S. have identified the emergence of a new type of brain-wasting disease that resembles Creutzfeld-Jakob, the human form of mad cow disease.
Similarly to Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (CJD), the human variant of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the new disease causes the brains of sufferers to fill with tiny holes, robbing them of the ability to think, speak and move.
In the U.S., it has been found in 16 people since 2002, 10 of whom have died of it.
Cases of the disease were first described in the Annals of Neurology in 2006 and are discussed in an article in the June 20 issue of the journal and in a July 9 article in New Scientist.
more: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/07/09/brain-wasting.html
They are three little letters that imply something truly terrible: CJD.
It stands for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the ailment most often associated with Mad Cow disease. And there may be a human case in the GTA.
CityNews has learned a Mississuga man in the neurosurgery unit in Trillium Health Centre may be suffering from the illness. There’s no confirmation yet that it’s linked to Mad Cow, but the diagnosis alone is frightening.
