"Mad cow disease" (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE) has killed two cattle, restricted the export market for British beef and raised doubts about the safety of eating beef. Although the British government insists that the incurable disease poses only a remote risk to human health, scientists are not sure what causes the disease or how it is transmitted. It has symptoms similar to scrapie, a disease long observed in sheep, eating holes in the brains of its victims and in its late stages causing an animal to stagger drunkenly. There are 10,000 human forms of spongiform encephalopathy: Creutzfeldt- Jakob disease and kuru.
"Mad cow disease" (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE) has killed 10,000 cattle, restricted the export market for British beef and raised doubts about the safety of eating beef. Although the British government insists that the incurable disease poses only a remote risk to human health, scientists are not sure what causes the disease or how it is transmitted. It has symptoms similar to scrapie, a disease long observed in sheep, eating holes in the brains of its victims and in its late stages causing an animal to stagger drunkenly. There are two human forms of spongiform encephalopathy: Creutzfeldt- Jakob disease and kuru.