Communicable disease outbreaks involving more than one country: systems approach to evaluating the response.

(2001) Communicable disease outbreaks involving more than one country: systems approach to evaluating the response. two main groups—one familiar " sporadic " disease (that is, Jakob's disease) and another affecting a younger age group, as in Creutzfeldt's case. The differing features between the groups may reflect infection with a differently conformed prion with a particular pattern of spread throughout the central nervous system. Lym-phoreticular system origins of, or infection by, this prion may contribute to the different clinical picture. Creutzfeldt took seven years and considerable pains to determine the originality of the disease he described. We should emulate his rigour and acknowledge his primacy. Conclusion Without doubt, general anxiety about so dreadful a possibility as bovine spongiform encephalopathy causing a similar disease in humans resulted in many workers involved with bovine spongiform encephalopathy and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease having to reach precipitate conclusions in which public safety was rightly the prime consideration. I believe that the evidence now available casts serious doubts on the case for a causal link between bovine spongiform encephalopathy and " new " variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The medical profession should, at least, be publicly debating this as an issue. The purpose of this paper is to start that process. I gratefully acknowledge the help of Dr David Doyle, Dr Jim Miller, and my sons Drs Angus and Gregor Venters for helping me to refine and focus my arguments. I also thank Dr David Ogilvie and Dr Sahaya Josephine for keeping me right on cau-sality and Ralph Hoeninger and Dr Andreas Weser for their patience and generously given guidance through the German of Creutzfeldt's original paper. Compelling transgenetic evidence for transmission of bovine spongi-form encephalopathy prions to humans. Protracted outbreak of Salmonella typhimurium definitive phage type 170 food poisoning related to tripe, 'pig bag', and chitterlings. A, et al. Transmissions to mice indicate that 'new variant' CJD is caused by the BSE agent.