Mad Cow Deaths Rising
News that the number of deaths from the human form of Mad Cow disease is rising faster than ever has forced the British government to address the problem more seriously than before, reports CBS News Correspondent Tom Fenton.
At the same time, scientists are being forced to admit that they know alarmingly little about a disease which, since breaking out in Britain in the 1980s, has affected some 180,000 cattle.
There have been 14 deaths from the human form of mad cow disease so far this year, bringing the total to 69.
And, according to Saturday's issue of the leading British medical journal, the number is rising by 30 percent a year.
The first images of animals suffering from Mad Cow disease led to food scares in Britain and around the world. The issue was treated with a mixture of panic. Until this week, it was thought that humans caught the disease only by eating infected meat and meat products.
Now, it seems there could be other means of transmission.
Dentists here have been told it is "theoretically possible" that variant CJD, or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease—the human form of Mad Cow disease—could be passed on from person to person during dental surgery by inadequately sterilized instruments.
Normal sterilization techniques, they say, may not be sufficient to kill the CJD agent
"They’re sterilized very much against certain things like Hepatitis-B, Hepatitis-C, HIV—things that we know about are definitely transferred," said Dr. Stephen Dealler, a microbiologist. "But being sterilized for them does not work against Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. It won't work."
Dealler, who has worked in this field from the beginning, warned dentists two years ago, but no one took any notice.
He has been warning successive British governments about the risks for years, he says, and they have always been slow to act.
"In 1993, I went to the government and said we must assume there is a risk from blood transfusion in the UK, we must assume it, and I just got ignored," he recalled. "but in 1996 they turned 'round and said, 'Oh, sorry Steve, we now think you're right."
It's also been learned that variants of the disease affect animals other than cows.
Belgium asked the United States Friday to send back 50 imported sheep suspected of carrying an illness similar to the fatal Mad Cow disease.
The sheep are among 376 in Vermont that U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman ordered destroyed after scientists said four dead animals showed traces of a brain disease that resembled bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the animal version of the disease.
Responding to the human health problem, Britain's Health Department ordered tests on more than 10,000 tonsils and appendixes to find how many people in the central county of Leicestershire have CJD.
It began the investigation in June after learning that four deaths from the brain-wasting disease, ad one other probable case, all were connected to one small pocket of central England.
Three of the victims died within weeks of each other and all lived within a close radius.
Last year, the European Commission lifted its worldwide ban on British beef exports—a ban France has maintained even as it discovers ever more infected cattle of its own. The Mad Cow crisis is expected to have cost Britain $6 billion by 2001.
Symptoms of the disease include blurred vision, slurred speech and a loss of limb control. There is no known cure, with most victims dying in a period of months.