World

Compensation For 'Mad Cow' Deaths

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 26, 2000 / 11:30 AM EDT / CBS

The British government promised millions in compensation Thursday for families stricken by the human version of "mad cow disease," as it released a massive independent report that said officials were slow to respond to evidence of this new threat to human health.

Agriculture Minister Nick Brown said the government had not decided details of the fund. Seventy-seven people have died from the brain-wasting disease and five other cases are suspected in Britain.

But it's still unknown whether a hundred or a hundred-thousand Britons could still die from the incurable disease, reports CBS News Correspondent Richard Roth.

"We intend to work closely with the families affected to identify the best way forward. The first discussions with the families and their representatives will take place next week," Brown said.

Since no one knows how long the incubation period is, no one knows how many people are still likely to die. If the incubation period is very long - some experts believe it could be as long as 30 or 40 years - the epidemic may hardly have started yet.

The report, the fruit of a 2 1/2-year inquiry headed by Lord Phillips, a high-ranking judge, largely concluded that officials acted honorably and did not seek to protect the farming industry at the expense of public health. However, mistakes were made in the handling of the crisis, which created a new fatal disease in humans and devastated Britain's cattle industry, the report concluded.

Submitting the report to the House of Commons, Brown called the disease "a national tragedy." Experts believe people contracted the human form of mad cow disease - variant Creutzfeld Jakob Disease - by eating infected beef.

It was families of victims who pressed for a public inquiry, like the mother of 14-year-old Zoe Jeffries, who is dying from the human form of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, for which there is no known cure.

Helen Jeffries believes Zoe, who now lies motionless and under heavy sedation in her mother's London home, was infected as an infant from contaminated baby food.

"I do feel guilty that I've probably fed her whatever has caused this," Jeffries said. "The main thing I want to hear is somebody saying sorry, and admitting that they've got it wrong."

BSE and variant Creutzfeld Jakob Disease, or vCJD, are varieties of a rare group of brain-wasting diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. Such illnesses cause microscopic holes in the brain, making it spongy. There is no cure.

The report concluded that BSE, which emerged in 1986, probably originated in the 1970s from a cow or other animal that got sick as a result of a gene mutation.

An epidemic then developed because of a new farming practice - the recycling as cattle feed of meat and bone meal from infected cows.

The report said agriculture officials suspected a potential public health risk from the beginning, when the cow disease was identifie in 1986. Slaughterhouse regulations were imposed to prevent infected meat reaching dinner tables, but the public was repeatedly reassured beef was safe to eat.

More scientists began to believe that BSE could be transmitted to humans after a domestic cat was diagnosed with a similar disease in May 1990.

It wasn't until March 1996 that the government announced that the cow illness could infect humans.

"The government was preoccupied with preventing an alarmist overreaction to BSE because it believed that the risk was remote," the report said. "It is now clear that this campaign of reassurance was a mistake."

The European Union banned all British beef exports in March 1996.

It lifted the prohibition in August, 1999. The decision was taken as a result of the safety measures adopted by Britain and evidence that BSE was on its way out.

All member states lifted the export embargo except France.

Outside the European Union, more than 40 countries, including the United States, Australia and Switzerland, still refuse to accept British beef.

Last week, the French agriculture ministry announced that nine new cases of BSE had been detected in western France, bringing the total recorded in the country since the beginning of the year to 71. Last year France had about 31 officially recorded cases of BSE.