Mad Cow Disease - Not Transmissable?

Two research scientists at King's College, London, have announced that bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE), also known as "mad cow disease," is not caused by infectious prions. Instead, the researchers say, BSE results from a self-limiting autoimmune syndrome purely attributable to the inadequately treated animal feeds of the early 1980s.

If proved, the new theory would rule out the possibility of encephalopathies crossing from species to species.

The researchers have found that the Acinetobacter microbe, which is common in the environment, has a sequence resembling that of brain tissue. Cattle that ate inadequately treated feed were exposed to far higher quantities of this microbe than cattle that ate grass. The result was an autoimmune syndrome, in which the body destroys itself.

Experiments uncovered elevated levels of antibodies to the microbe in 29 BSE-affected cattle. Also, once the use of meat and bone meal as supplements in cattle feed was banned in 1987, BSE figures fell drastically.

Nevertheless, Richard Lacey, professor of clinical microbiology at Leeds University, has consistently argued that the number of BSE cases is not dropping.

(Adapted with permission from Environmental Health News, 4 June 1999.)