Free Republic

Memo sent to health-care professionals in province says symptoms are similar to Creutzfeldt-Jakob diseasePublic Health is closely monitoring a cluster of more than 40 New Brunswick patients with symptoms similar to those of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare and fatal brain disease. In an internal memo obtained by Radio-Canada, sent on March 5 by the office of the chief medical officer of health to the New Brunswick Medical Society and to associations of doctors and nurses, the department notes the existence of a cluster of 42 cases of a progressive neurological syndrome of unknown origin. A first case was diagnosed in...

The professional athlete who completed the entire Appalachian Trail in record-setting time paid a $500 fine Wednesday for drinking alcohol atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin in July, an incident that prompted a broader debate about hikers’ behavior in Baxter State Park. An attorney for Scott Jurek said his client agreed to pay the fine because he did pop open a bottle of champagne atop Maine’s highest peak in violation of Baxter State Park’s no-alcohol policy after his 46-day run ended July 12. But as part of the plea agreement, prosecutors dropped charges of littering and hiking with an oversized group, two...

Reviewed by F. Perry Wilson, MD, MSCE; Instructor of Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Action Points Note that this case-control study of concussed football players with mood and cognitive symptomatology showed higher uptake of a tau-specific tracer in MRI scans compared with healthy controls.Be aware that, as the burden of depression was lower in the control group, the findings of increased tau-protein among cases may be due to depression or cognitive impairment and independent of head injury history. A new imaging technique has allowed detection of tau protein abnormalities in the concussed brains of living...

One single cow. That’s all it took for the ultimate loss of an estimated $7 billion to the beleaguered, over-regimented by government Canadian cattle industry. There were no Sherlock Holmes-type detectives out on the hunt trying to find out how the sick cow showed up one day in land-vast Canada. A long-term, proud Canadian tradition, the once thriving cattle industry, was plunged into crisis by the discovery of a single infected cow. The clues of the Canadian Mad Cow Mystery are worth at least a serious look: In May of 2003, an Alberta Black Angus with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE),...

Britain's second possible case of person-to-person transmission of the human equivalent of mad cow disease via a blood transfusion indicates a possible second phase of the epidemic in people. What is even more worrying, experts say, is that the second victim - who received blood in 1999 from a person who later died of a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) - belongs to a different genetic group to every other of the 150 vCJD victims to date.

Defense Department officials remain confident that beef products in operational rations, served in military mess halls or sold in commissaries are safe. This updated assessment comes in the wake of the first disease case diagnosed at a Washington state farm Dec. 23. That sparked nationwide concern about beef safety in the United States. More than 30 countries have since banned the import of U.S. beef. Known formally as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE – mad cow is a brain-wasting disease of cattle that affects the animal's nervous system and eats away its brain. In humans, the disease has been linked...

NEWS RELEASE Defense Commissary Agency Office of Corporate Communications 1300 E Avenue Fort Lee, VA 23801-1800 Tel: (804) 734 8061 DSN: 687-8061 FAX: (804) 734-8248 DSN: 687-8248 www. commissaries. com Release Number: 82-03 Date: December 30, 2003 Contact: Flo Dunn, Media Relations Tel.: (804) 734-8768 E-mail: florence. dunn@ deca. mil Commissary officials sensitive to beef concerns By Bonnie Powell, bonnie. powell@ deca. mil FORT LEE, Va. – Officials at the Defense Commissary Agency are closely monitoring the ever-changing situation involving a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as "mad cow" disease, identified Dec. 23 in a single cow...