Feo: Mad Cow Disease Hits US
Posted by Feo Amante on Dec 29, 2003 at 15:18
(206.72.67.158)Re: Mad Cow Disease Hits US (Thermus aquaticus)
Hey T.A.
Yep, I wouldn't say it if there was no evidence (I know that evidence doesn't make it fact. But evidence is all it takes to make a high risk factor).
http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/conditions/12/17/madcow.disease.ap/index.html
The article above refers to the prions being in the blood stream. As it says, the blood recipient was believed to have got it from the blood of the infected person. One definitely got the other's blood.
It might be entirely possible that, the recipient got it from another source. The issue here, is that the researchers involved in studying this particular case admit that BSE can infect someone via blood transfusion.
I believe it was on a Discovery Channel (it may have been PBS or it may have been National G.) program a few years back showed how cow blood is in pretty much every part of the cow - even milk. And how nerves (which are main source of it) are laced through all meat. It also demonstrated that, even if you burn the meat to a fine white ash, the prions remain intact.
More info:
http://www.citypaper.com/1998-03-11/feature2.html