Family and friends of American victims of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the fatal brain disorder sometimes linked to mad cow disease, on Friday questioned whether the wasting illness that killed their loved ones was actually due to eating contaminated US beef.
After federal authorities said on Tuesday that a cow in Washington state was found to have mad cow disease, public health experts have been calling for a review of the US Agriculture Department's screening procedures for cattle.
But some victims' families have gone further, saying that the human form of the disease may have already hit the US and that the government has been lax in its testing possible links and enforcing safety standards.
"The most frustrating part of this disease is that there are no answers," said Chris Turnley, whose brother Peter Putnam, who grew up in Washington state, died of the disease last October at age 35. "They need to figure out the cause but also start figuring out treatments."
So far, none of the roughly 300 cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease diagnosed in the US each year has been linked to US-produced beef, said Pierluigi Gambetti, director of the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western University.
But Dr Michael Greger, a doctor in Scarsdale, New York, and coordinator for the Organic Consumers Association, said it would be wrong to take comfort from that statistic. The disease has a long incubation period and few dementia-related deaths in the US are investigated.
"There have been no confirmed cases, but just as there weren't any confirmed cases of mad cow disease, it is a function of how hard one looks for it," Greger said.
The variant of the illness linked to mad cow disease was first reported in Britain, where about 150 people have died and where mad cow disease was first identified in 1986. The disease is marked by sudden and escalating neurological and muscular symptoms, including confusion, depression, behavioral changes and impaired vision and coordination.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease occurs spontaneously at a rate of about one case per 1 million people. It is incurable and always fatal. A related illness, known as new variant CJD, has been linked in Europe to eating meat from cattle infected with mad cow disease.
Patricia Ewanitz of Port Jefferson Station, New York, says she wonders about the death of her 58-year-old husband six years ago due to Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease.
"This didn't have to happen," said Ewanitz, co-founder of the CJD Voice support group. "We've been warning them [government agencies] that every cow that goes into the food chain should be tested."
In Kansas, 62-year-old Linda Foulke died of the disease last Sunday, and a specialist at the Wesley Medical Center in Wichita confirmed the diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the Wichita Eagle reported on Friday.
Bill Patton, Foulke's son-in-law, said doctors told the family the type of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease Foulke contracted was different from the type tied to mad cow disease. But Patton was quoted as saying the family was worried there might be a connection.
Wesley Medical Center spokeswoman Cheryle Olsen said she would not comment on the case other than to say the family was likely too grief-stricken to understand the situation clearly.
Meanwhile in Putnam's case, his family says his death is a mystery and they are awaiting word from a British laboratory on a brain biopsy test. He first showed symptoms of the disease while living in Alaska.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS