Mad Cow Disease Info?

Oscar Waddups: Mad cow disease (aka BSE) is an infectious disease that causes progressive damage to the brain in cattle. It is caused by prions. These aren't viruses or bacteria, they're just a particular protein in the brain that has changed into the wrong 3D shape and becomes infectious. When prions come into contact with other normal-shaped molecules of the protein, they cause those to change into the 'bad' shape and so on, until the brain is full of abnormal protein, the nerve cells die and there are lots of little holes - the brain gets 'spongy'. The cows get very agitated, stagger around and eventually will die. BSE probably started when a cow developed BSE by chance (it can just happen spontaneously, very rarely). Then this cow was basically made into food for other cows (this is obviously banned now). Prions are infectious, so the cows that ate the contaminated food got the disease too, and so it went on until many thousands of cows got ill. This happened in quite! a few countries, but most cases were in the UK. Unfortunately the disease takes a long time to show up, so by the time people realised what was going on, loads of people had been exposed to it and it spread to some people - in humans it's called 'variant CJD'. Again most cases were in the UK. As well as variant CJD, there are other types of CJD that have nothing to do with eating beef - just like it can sometimes spontaneously happen in cows, so the same is true for people. It can also be genetic. There are also other similar prion diseases (nothing to do with BSE) in sheep, elk and deer....Show more

Son Ahlers: Here is a good article, including how the disease manifests in humans. http://www.answers.com/topic/bovine-spongiform-enc...

Emilie Santmyer: Mad Cow Disease is also known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). You can get it from eating beef that has been infected. The spinal cord, brain and eyes of the cattle carry the highest level of prions, ! the disease agent in BSE. You can minimize your risk of contr! acting BSE by avoiding beef altogether, or only eating whole (not ground) beef preferably cuts furthest away from the head and the spine.BSE is a relatively new disease, which started when normally vegetarian cattle were given feed that also contained ground-up sheep parts from sheep infected with scrapie, or ground-up cows infected with BSE. The disease was first recognized in England, and then Europe. There have been no cases of BSE in humans in the US caused by eating US beef. In people, BSE can remain dormant for years, and then suddenly manifest itself....Show more