Free Republic

Oftentimes, the climate alarmists are their own worst enemy. It sounds reasonable enough that carbon emissions might have an impact on the climate, but it's a rather nasty thing to prove, especially when alarmist predictions fail, over and over again. It's far from the "scientific consensus." But the alarmists don't tone down their rhetoric — they ratchet it up to 11. They want to take away your plastic straws, your cars, your burgers. Then there's this behavioral scientist in Sweden who wants us to eat human flesh to deal with the effects of climate change. No, this isn't The Onion...

2 deaths in Spain linked to mad cow disease--authorities Agence France-Presse First Posted 23:18:00 04/07/2008 MADRID--Two people have died in central Spain after contracting the human form of mad cow disease, regional authorities said Monday, in what would be the first such cases in the country in three years. "Two people are dead from Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (vCJD)," the human variant of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, said a spokeswoman for the health department in the central Castilla-Leon region. One of them died on December 28 and the other on February 7, she said. Spanish national radio...

State tests will seek cause of Portsmouth woman's death By Nancy Young The Virginian-Pilot April 11, 2008 PORTSMOUTH The Virginia Department of Health should have test results back in several months that will determine whether a young woman who died Wednesday had a rare brain disorder that has been linked to mad cow disease. Health department officials stressed again Thursday that they were looking into a range of disorders. The 22-year-old woman, identified in media reports as Aretha Vinson, died at Bon Secours Maryview Medical Center. She had been suffering from encephalopathy, a degenerative brain condition that can be...

Prion-infected mice survive longer A new method of treatment can appreciably slow down the progress of the fatal brain disease scrapie in mice. This has been established by researchers from the Universities of Munich and Bonn together with their colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Martinsried. To do this they used an effect discovered by the US researchers Craig Mello and Andrew Fire, for which they were awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for Medicine. Scrapie is a variant of the cattle disease BSE and the human equivalent Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. However, it will take years for the method to be...