First U.S. human mad cow patient dies

[PfcHammer]

http://interestalert.com/brand/siteia.shtml?Story=st/sn/06210006aaa02527.upi&Sys=siteia&Fid=LATEBRKN&Type=News&Filter=Late%20Breaking

First U.S. human mad cow patient dies

FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla., June 21 (UPI) -- The first and only person in the United States to develop the human form of mad cow disease has died in Florida.

Charlene Singh of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., died early Sunday morning, her aunt Sharon Singh-Passley, told United Press International Monday. Singh, 25, died from complications due to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease -- a fatal, incurable brain disorder humans can acquire from eating meat infected with the mad cow pathogen.

She had fought the disease for more than two years after being diagnosed in April, 2002. Health authorities concluded Singh, who lived in Britain until she was 12, contracted the disease while in England and it was not due to the consumption of U.S. beef.

Singh-Passley said she hoped Charlene's death would serve as a wake up call for the United States government to test more cows for mad cow disease to help prevent another human death.

[Fear]

1. *phew*, it wasn't due to American beef, now THAT would be something!

[progressivebydesign]

2. Your photo and sig line.. why are they attacking that poor woman? N/T

[rfranklin]

4. Because they can...

and you have to do something after you get all dressed up in those Darth Vader Halloween costumes.

[Fear]

10. LOL@darth Vader costumes

[Fear]

9. A peaceful demonstrator..........it's horrible.

[Fear]

11. and now they get these as well! - but it's all for the people's security

Sheriff gets armored vehicles

Army donates personnel carriers to departments in Macomb, Oakland and Wayne

PUBLISHED: June 15, 2004

By Norb Franz
Macomb Daily Staff Writer


Macomb Daily photo by David Dalton
Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel said his department's new armored personnel carrier is a welcomed crime-fighting tool.

Macomb County's "newest" weapon against crime is 44 years old, weighs a beefy 10 tons, travels only 3 miles on a gallon of gas, sits 10 people uncomfortably and can flatten a house.
And it's a war veteran.

The Sheriff's Department on Monday took delivery of an M113 armored personnel carrier, compliments of the U.S. Army.

"You can't beat this," said smiling Sheriff Mark Hackel as he admired the vehicle. "It didn't cost us a dime."
<snip>
more:
http://www.macombdaily.com/stories/061504/loc_swat001.shtml

[RebelOne]

3. Glad I'm a vegetarian.

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. It is not the first

I know of another case in Florida a couple of years ago. However, on the death certificate the cause of death was from choking. Well the poor fellow died from choking because he no longer had control of his throat muscles, or much else at that point, and despite orders that he was not to have anything giving to him orally, a night nurse decided to give him food anyway.

I am willing to bet that there are many other cases like this, were Creutzfeldt-Jakob is suspected but not documented because they can find a way to avoid actually saying that was the cause of death.

[adriennel]

6. I also know someone

whose father died many years ago from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease...it took them some time to diagnose it. He was American but presumably caught it while serving overseas.

[treepig]

12. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease isn't "mad cow disease"

it occurs naturally in the population at a low frequency.

variantCreutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or vCJD, is "mad cow disease"

having said that, i can get to the real point of my post, another opportunity to make sure the squirrels don't get slighted:



Squirrel Brains May Be Unsafe

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) -- Squirrel brains are a lip-smacking memory for Janet Norris Gates. They were the choicest morsels of the game her father once hunted in Tennessee. ``In our family, we saw it as a prized piece of meat, and if he shared it with you, you were pretty happy. Not that he was stingy,'' said Mrs. Gates, an oral historian in Frankfort, ``but there's just not much of a squirrel brain.'' Now, some people might want to think twice about eating squirrel brains, a backwoods Southern delicacy.

Two Kentucky doctors last month reported a possible link between eating squirrel brains and the rare and deadly human variety of mad-cow disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, thought to strike one person in 1 million, produces holes in the brain. Symptoms include loss of muscle control and dementia. It may take years, even decades, for symptoms to appear.
Dr. Eric Weisman, a behavioral neurologist who practices in rural western Kentucky, reported in the distinguished British medical journal The Lancet that he has treated 11 people for Creutzfeldt-Jakob in four years, and all had eaten squirrel brains at some time. Six of the victims, ranging in age from 56 to 78, have died.
The normal incidence of the disease in the area should be one case in about 10 years, he said.

http://www.greysquirrel.net/brain.html

[Fear]

14. That is interesting, thanks for posting!

[DoYouEverWonder]

16. I believe

the person I know about also served in the military during WWII and lived in England for a while.

[AP]

7. This isn't true. a year ago, I heard on the Todd Mundt show on NPR

that two men in Ann Arbor, MI died of mad cow in the last couple years. They'd never been to Europe and nobody's sure how they got it.

Also, there was that NJ case that was in the papers. Something like 23 people who all ate a NJ racetrack developed BSE and have died.

I think there are lots of lies in the media about the extent of mad cow in the US.

I don't think it's an epidemic, but I think there is a lot of misleading reporting.

[Mithras61]

8. Re: two men in Ann Arbor...

I believe they decided that the men got the disease from eating deer meat from a hunting trip. I know that WI has been killing off entire herds for the deer having a similar disease, and I learned that at about the same time I first heard about this case...

[AP]

13. They weren't hunters, IIRC. I believe they addressed that in the show.

Seriously, I think that the conclusion was that they had no idea how they got the disease.

[Fear]

15. yes you are right,

start doing searches.....actually lately the testing on BSE has been eased down on in the US over the last years.....weird eh?, especially now when it was at it's height some time ago......

do some searches in google, sorry, don't have any more links on it.

[whatelseisnew]

17. 12 to 25... that's 13 years...

after she contracted it & left England? That's discouraging to anyone who was there in 1991 and ate lots of bangers, mutton and blood pudding...

[struggle4progress]

18. Labs testing for mad cow get off to slow start

Contracts holding up screening program

... the Agriculture Department's $70 million testing program has been slow to gear up to the point where it can screen 220,000 animals for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, in the next 12 to 18 months.

The program, which started June 1, is meant to reassure domestic and international consumers that U.S. beef is safe to eat. People can get a variation of the brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease by eating beef infected with a protein that contains BSE.

Most of the agency's 12 mad cow testing laboratories nationwide, including the one at Kansas State University, still aren't operating. States such as Kansas have been bogged down in contract negotiations with rendering plants in the effort to get brain samples for testing.
<snip>

http://www.ljworld.com/section/stateregional/story/173598

[sam sarrha]

19. here are some SERIOUS links... DON'T believe the Media !!!!!!!

www.maddeer.com It is lose in the deer herds from mink fed downer cows.. which are also fed to children in public schools. great links.

www.organicconsumers.org and www.madcow.org in depth links

HUNDREDS of people in this country have died of this prion disease. some independent tests showed that up to 12% of Alzheimer's patients in a rest home actually had prion disease.

[jilln]

20. Here's a good site:

http://www.madcowboy.com/

That's Howard Lyman, the guy who got sued with Oprah for "disparaging" meat...

Oh, and everyone should know that mad cow can apparently be spread through dairy products and presumably any other animal derivative (so they've been putting it in our medicines, etc.)

And it's still legal to feed one animal to another in this country, which is where it all started.