"How the Cows Turned Mad tells the story of a disease that continues to elude on many levels. Yet science has come far in understanding its origins, incubation, and transmission. This book is a case history that illuminates the remarkable progression of science."--BOOK JACKET.

Explains what mad cow disease is, how it is transmitted, the effects on animals and humans, and how it is controlled.

Mad Cow U.S.A. shatters the false belief that the government and food industry would never let it happen here. Even as tens of thousands of cows died in Britain, the government denied the risk to human beings. Knowing the similar risk in the U.S., government and industry have managed a successful public relations offensive to keep Americans in the dark. Rampton and Stauber expose, for the first time, the deadly game of "dementia roulette" being played with our food supply.

This book presents important analyses of current issues in BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or "mad cow disease") as a fatal neurological disease of cattle, believed to be transmitted mainly by feeding infected cattle parts back to cattle. More than 187,000 cases have been reported world-wide, 183,000 of them in the United Kingdom (UK) where BSE was first identified in 1986. The annual number of new cases has declined steeply since 1992. Humans who eat contaminated beef are believed susceptible to a rare but fatal brain wasting disease, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD). About 160 people have been diagnosed with vCJD since 1986, most in the UK and none linked to any Canadian or U.S. meat consumption.

The aim of this book is to publicise and bring to a wider audience the concept that the cause of two neurological diseases, namely multiple sclerosis (MS) and “mad cow disease” also known as “bovine spongiform encephalopathy” are related through exposure to a common microbe Acinetobacter which is found in human sinuses, on skin and in the soil. An infection is the cause of a neurological disease in man and in animals. Elevated levels of antibodies to Acinetobacter have been found in multiple sclerosis patients as well as in ruminants who have been described as suffering from “mad cow disease” following exposure to contaminated feed supplements. The overall objective and scope of this book is to inform the audience, the reader, that multiple sclerosis may be linked to a microbe Acinetobacter which carries molecular structures resembling myelin, the outer sheath covering of neurons.

When the cattle-borne sickness known as Mad Cow Disease first appeared in America in 2003, authorities were quick to assure the nation that the outbreak was isolated, quarantined, and posed absolutely no danger to the general public. What we were not told was that the origins of the sickness may already have been here and suspected for a quarter of a century. This illuminating exposé of the threat to our nation's health reveals for the first time how Mad Cow Disease (a.k.a. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) has jumped species, infecting humans in the form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), and may be hidden in the enormous increase in the number of Alzheimer's cases since 1979. Detailing the history and biology of Mad Cow Disease, Brain Trust discloses how an investigation into the mysterious deaths in a group of cannibals in a remote part of the world evolved into a research program in the United States that may have had unforeseen and frightening consequences. The shocking questions examined include: • Have millions of Americans already been exposed to the prions known to cause Mad Cow Disease through years of eating tainted beef? • Does the epidemic of prion disease spreading like wildfire through the nation's deer and elk pose a threat to hunters and venison eaters? • Are the cattle mutilations discovered in the last 30 years part of a covert, illegal sampling program designed to learn how far the deadly prions have spread throughout the nation's livestock and beef products? Exposing the devastating truth about Mad Cow Disease and a new theory of the possible consequences of a little-known government research program and the potential national health catastrophe that may be the result, Brain Trust inoculates Americans with an effective cure: the truth.

The alarm sounded by Canada's confirmed case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) has reaffirmed the exigency of establishing improved safeguards and more aggressive surveillance protocols in North America and around the world. Research converging on the probable causative agent--prion proteins--calls for intensive assessment of the headway gained in tracing prions, testing for transmissible neurodegenerative diseases, and developing methods for cornering the epidemic. With an illustrious panel of 36 international contributors, this timely book marshals techniques for prion protein assay and diagnosis of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs).