It now seems certain that the disease can spread to humans under certain poorly understood conditions. Victims, often only in their twenties and thirties, begin to waste away mentally and physically until they become completely immobile and mute . Death follows shortly afterwards. The agent of transmission, most likely a rogue protein known as a prion, is equally upsetting. Prions are invisible to blood and tissue tests so the only way the disease can be diagnosed with certainty is by examining a victim s brain after death.
Prions are also impervious to cooking and radiation.
Thus, if a local case of mad cow disease or, worse yet, a case of vCJD, is ever discovered, public panic could easily ensue . Unless, that is, government and health officials act swiftly to implement what has been learned from the British and European experience and, equally importantly, the media acts responsibly. Everyone should be rightly concerned about this terrible disease, but hysteria is hardly warranted . Instances of vCJD are extremely rare and they are likely to remain that way. In Great Britain, for example, only about 90 cases have been identified since 1993 despite the discovery of more than 200,000 infected cows.