Abstract
In Britain there is widespread concern that the CJD virus could strike again. This is because research points to its long incubation period. The original ‘Mad’ cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), initially emerged in Britain in 1986 as a result of animal feed when beef offal was fed to cattle, which are natural grass-grazers. There were reports that there were an estimated 2 million children who were prescribed BSE risk medicines by the department of health and some drug companies responded to the outbreak by quickly switching to non-UK sources for bovine material for their vaccines. The key issue is how long stocks of these medicines continued to be used until they were all exhausted. There was apparently no with drawl by the drugs makers and they were only required to terminate their manufacture in March 1989. The impact was a long duration in eradicating the UK-sourced material from the manufacturing process that the government admitted. There needs to be a greater application of the epidemiological studies of prion transmission, that would reduce the infectivity of human tissues, and the efficacy of removing microbes by de toxificating their manufacture.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.