Mad Cow has contributed to British problem with agriculture

  The Associated Press Cattle look out of a cattle van in
front of the slaughterhouse in Euskirchen, Germany. These cattle
are two of the 400,000 which are to be slaughtered.

By Dharshani Dharmawardena and Hemesh
Patel
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

In 1986, 18-year-old Stephen Churchill planned to join the
British Royal Air Force.

But instead of flying over the English Channel, Churchill found
himself grounded with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, which is
more commonly known as Mad Cow Disease.

Initially making him thinner than usual, BSE made Churchill
hallucinate and eventually relegated him to 24-hour day care.

Within 10 months, he died, unable to walk or communicate during
his last days.

Initially, doctors thought Churchill had a genetic brain
disorder called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which mainly affects the
motor functions of people 55 years or older, said Ralph Robinson,
assistant adjunct professor in the department of microbiology and
molecular genetics. But when more young people began showing
similar symptoms, scientists began to worry.

“You never ever see Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in young
people like this,” Robinson said. “They realized it had
to have a different mode of transmission ““ it wasn’t
just genetic.”

Today, BSE and foot-and-mouth disease have created an economic
crisis in Great Britain, hindering both tourism and the British
exports containing meat products because people are afraid of the
disease.

And the situation does not seem to be letting up. According to
Britain’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Web
site, officials find 30 suspected cases of BSE in cows a week.

“It was transmitted to cows in Britain because the cattle
would be fed ground-up sheeps’ heads,” said Lawrence
Feldman, associate professor in the Department of Microbiology,
Immunology and Molecular Genetics.

BSE is neither a microbe or a virus, but a prion, which is a
mutated protein.

Unlike a normal protein, which is curled, the BSE prion is
straight. As it is transmitted from species to species, it comes
into contact with normal proteins, changing their shape, according
to Feldman. These straight rods form plaque or build up in cells
making up nerves causing degeneration of the brain.

“(Prions) act like slow viruses because they convert
normal proteins, which in turn convert other ones,” he said.
The prions harm humans and cows but not sheep because the disease
is specific to certain species, Feldman said.

He added that farmers originally treated the cow feed with
petroleum oil, which prevented BSE from spreading. That stopped
because of oil shortages in the 1980s, inadvertently instigating
the spread of the disease throughout Britain’s cattle
population.

According to the MAFF Web site, symptoms of BSE in cattle appear
five years after initial contact because the prions take that long
to incubate in the animals. When people eat beef infected with BSE,
they too contract the disease, as Churchill did in 1986. After the
initial infection with the BSE prion, there is an average two-year
incubation period in humans before effects manifest.

“First, it is a loss of motor function,” Robinson
said. “Basically, you become really klutzy. Then it’s
memory, and eventually you become immobile and go into a
coma.” Once the disease starts to progress, a person infected
with BSE will only have a couple of months to live, he said.
Because the prion is mainly transmitted through nerves, Robinson
said scientists do not believe milk or other bodily fluids are
affected.

Though the recent situation in England has many people thinking
the disease originated in Britain, Robinson said researchers first
found it in the highlands of Papua New Guinea in the 1950s.

Natives of that area practiced a form of ancestor veneration
where living family members ate a piece of the brain of deceased
loved ones to pay respect. This ritual, practiced from generation
to generation, preserved not only tradition but “Kuru,”
the natives’ name for BSE, Robinson said.

Though BSE has not crossed over to the United States, officials
are not taking any chances. Recently, officials in Vermont seized
sheep suspected of carrying the BSE prion, according to
Feldman.

“Basically, if a cow dies of neurological symptoms, they
slaughter it and do an assay on it to make sure,” he said.
And perhaps this precaution can be justified when examining the
effects of BSE.

“It’s 100 percent fatal,” Robinson said.
“There’s really nothing doctors can do but put you in a
hospital and wait.”

With reports from Kiyoshi Tomono, Daily Bruin Contributor.