Human Remains In Feed May Have Led To BSE In UK

ANIMAL feed containing the remains of human bodies may have been responsible for the first case of mad cow disease, a new study has claimed. The cause of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), which is thought to have developed into the fatal human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and killed 80 people in the United Kingdom, is unknown. But it is now being suggested the disease originated in bone meal from India that was contaminated with human corpses infected with CJD and fed to cows. Since it emerged in the 1980s, scientists have thought BSE was caused by sheep scrapie or a previously undetected bovine transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). But researchers Professor Alan Colchester, of the University of Kent, and his daughter Nancy Colchester, formerly of the University of Edinburgh, found such theories "inadequate". Instead, they suggested that human CJD was the cause of BSE, that this was transmitted orally via animal feed and that the feed came from India. Prof Colchester said sporadic CJD in humans is known worldwide: India has reported 85 cases over the past 37 years. In a paper published yesterday in the Lancet, he suggested that, because of the poverty in India and the practice of disposing of bodies in the Ganges, bone collectors may have encountered human remains that were sold on for export.

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