Major Human Mad Cow Epidemic Unlikely
By Patricia Reaney on January 12, 2005
(Excerpt - for complete article please visit Reuters.co.uk)
LONDON (Reuters) - A major epidemic of the human form of mad cow disease is unlikely, scientists say.
Estimates of how many people are likely to develop the fatal brain disease from eating meat contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) have varied widely.
But researchers at Imperial College London said on Wednesday they believed only about 70 future cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) would be diagnosed in the country.
"We think that the epidemic will be quite small in terms of cases that have arisen from consumption of beef," said epidemiologist Dr Azra Ghani.
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