Mad-cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (the
spongiform is for sponge, as in "this disease will chew holes in your
brain until it looks like a sponge"), first came to the public's
attention in the mid-1990s, when the illness, caused by deformed protein
fragments called prions, made the jump from cows to humans.
Known in humans as variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the illness is spread through contaminated
meat and causes a host of awful degenerative neurological symptoms,
including dementia, loss of nervous system and muscle control, and
eventually, death.
And as if the idea of your brain slowly turning to Swiss cheese isn't gross enough, its path to prominence is also disgusting.
The dangerous prion spread to
outbreak proportions due to the then-common cannibalistic practice of
feeding diseased cattle remains (including bone and brain, complete with
BSE prions) to other cattle, which were then consumed by humans. Now,
that's just wrong.
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