Smith, a retired Army sergeant, had not been out of the country since leaving Germany in 1988, said his brother, Larry Smith of Cleveland. That lessens the chance that he could have eaten tainted beef. Moreover, the new variant of CJD seems to attack people decades younger than Smith and to take more than twice as long to run its course as the disease that killed him. We don't know exactly what it does, but it's a friendly kind of protein. There it does its damage.
Coordination is lost.
Movements become involuntary. Dementia sets in. Victims may lapse into a coma. In a year or less, most are dead. Because CJD is so rare, it can easily be misdiagnosed at the outset.