Since medical experts are now convinced that CJD can be transmitted from cows to people who eat meat products contaminated with the mad cow disease infectant, the American Red Cross announced this week that it will ban blood donations from people who lived and traveled in Britain, France, Portugal or Ireland for six months or more between 1980 and 1996. In Britain, hundreds of cows and at least 80 people have died from the brain-wasting disease. Two people have also died in France and medical experts wonder if this is the tip of an iceberg of potential cases. All three victims hunted and ate deer and elk. The culprit in both the animal and human disease is called a prion .
Prion stands for pro teinaceous in fectious particles.
More simply, prions start out as normal proteins that mysteriously change shape and then destroy brain tissue. This week I talked about prions with a medical researcher who is trying to find out how prions spread from cows to people. As far as scientists know, scrapie has not spread from sheep to people, but mad cow disease went from cows to humans. It's in cows. It's in sheep and other mammals.