FYI;
U.S. Mad Cow Link Raised in Creutzfeldt-Jakob Cases
Fri 26 December, 2003 21:37

By Jed Seltzer

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Family and friends of victims of Creutzfeldt-Jakob
Disease, the fatal brain

disorder sometimes linked to mad cow disease, on Friday questioned whether the
victims contracted the

condition from contaminated U.S. beef.

After federal authorities said on Tuesday that a cow in Washington state was
found to have the

disorder known as mad cow disease, public health experts have been calling for
a review of the U.S.

Agriculture Department's screening procedures for cattle.

Some researchers believe that the human form of the disease has already hit the
United States, but

that the government either did not put the pieces together or was slow in
notifying the public and the

beef industry. So far, victims of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in the United
States have never been

linked to U.S.-produced beef.

A spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said he did
not know if there was

any ongoing investigation into whether cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease were
related to U.S. beef.

"We would investigate any potential cases," said spokesman Von Roebuck.
"Anything that has been

suspected has been looked at."

Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease occurs spontaneously at a rate of about one case per
1 million people. It is

incurable and always fatal, chewing holes in the brain that lead to dementia
and death. A related

illness, known as new variant CJD, has been linked in Europe to eating meat
from cattle infected with

mad cow disease.

Janet Skarbek, an attorney and accountant from Cinnaminson, New Jersey, three
years ago began

investigating the possibility that mad cow disease has afflicted and killed
several people in or near

southern New Jersey.

Skarbek's suspicions center on the now-defunct Cherry Hill horse racetrack,
where her mother worked. A

colleague there, Carrie Mahan, died at age 29 of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

Skarbek said it is unclear whether Mahan's case was naturally occurring
Creutzfeldt-Jakob or the

variant commonly linked with contaminated cows. The natural, often inherited,
version is more

frequently seen in old people.

Through obituary reports, Skarbek has since tracked down six other deaths over
the past three years in

the southern New Jersey and Philadelphia area that were likely due to CJD. She
says she contacted the

family and friends of all the victims, and found they all had eaten at the
racetrack in the late 1980s

or in the 1990s.

"If I can find seven CJD people who ate at this racetrack, think of how much
the government could do

with all the information they have," she said.

Skarbek said she was denied a request for information from the Centers for
Disease Control to find out

what the agency knows. She sent an appeal on Thursday.

A Kansas woman's recent death from the brain-wasting disease has sparked some
family concerns that her

death may be connected to mad cow disease in the United States, even though
medical experts have said

there is no connection, a Kansas newspaper reported on Friday.

Linda Foulke, 62, died of the disease on Sunday, a few weeks after she began
having difficulty

walking, and a specialist at the Wesley Medical Center in Wichita confirmed the
diagnosis of

Creutzfeldt-Jakob, the Wichita Eagle said.

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 bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (BSE), also

known as mad cow disease.

But Patton was quoted as saying the family was worried there might be a
connection, especially after

U.S. government officials confirmed this week that BSE had been discovered for
the first time in the

United States in the carcass of a butchered cow.

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.

In February this year, the CDC said three outdoorsmen who ate game animals they
had killed at a cabin

in northern Wisconsin, and who later died of neurological diseases, probably
did not succumb to mad

cow disease, although two of the hunters who died were diagnosed with
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

The CDC said at the time that it "didn't find any association" between the game
feast and the men's

development of CJD, and that their disease was probably the naturally occurring
form, not the one

caused by eating infected meat. Elk and deer in parts of the United States get
a related disease

called chronic wasting disease.