- NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Family
and friends of victims of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the fatal brain disorder
sometimes linked to mad cow disease, on Friday questioned whether the victims
contracted the condition from contaminated U.S. beef.
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- After federal authorities said on Tuesday that a cow
in Washington state was found to have the disorder known as mad cow disease,
public health experts have been calling for a review of the U.S. Agriculture
Department's screening procedures for cattle.
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- Some researchers believe that the human form of the disease
has already hit the United States, but that the government either did not
put the pieces together or was slow in notifying the public and the beef
industry. So far, victims of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in the United States
have never been linked to U.S.-produced beef.
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- A spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention said he did not know if there was any ongoing investigation
into whether cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease were related to U.S. beef.
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- "We would investigate any potential cases,"
said spokesman Von Roebuck. "Anything that has been suspected has
been looked at."
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- Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease occurs spontaneously at a rate
of about one case per 1 million people. It is incurable and always fatal,
chewing holes in the brain that lead to dementia and death. A related illness,
known as new variant CJD, has been linked in Europe to eating meat from
cattle infected with mad cow disease.
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- Janet Skarbek, an attorney and accountant from Cinnaminson,
New Jersey, three years ago began investigating the possibility that mad
cow disease has afflicted and killed several people in or near southern
New Jersey.
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- Skarbek's suspicions center on the now-defunct Cherry
Hill horse racetrack, where her mother worked. A colleague there, Carrie
Mahan, died at age 29 of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.
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- Skarbek said it is unclear whether Mahan's case was naturally
occurring Creutzfeldt-Jakob or the variant commonly linked with contaminated
cows. The natural, often inherited, version is more frequently seen in
old people.
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- Through obituary reports, Skarbek has since tracked down
six other deaths over the past three years in the southern New Jersey and
Philadelphia area that were likely due to CJD. She says she contacted the
family and friends of all the victims, and found they all had eaten at
the racetrack in the late 1980s or in the 1990s.
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- "If I can find seven CJD people who ate at this
racetrack, think of how much the government could do with all the information
they have," she said.
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- Skarbek said she was denied a request for information
from the Centers for Disease Control to find out what the agency knows.
She sent an appeal on Thursday.
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- A Kansas woman's recent death from the brain-wasting
disease has sparked some family concerns that her death may be connected
to mad cow disease in the United States, even though medical experts have
said there is no connection, a Kansas newspaper reported on Friday.
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- Linda Foulke, 62, died of the disease on Sunday, a few
weeks after she began having difficulty walking, and a specialist at the
Wesley Medical Center in Wichita confirmed the diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jakob,
the Wichita Eagle said.
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- Bill Patton, Foulke's son-in-law, said doctors told the
family the type of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease Foulke contracted was different
from the type tied to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known
as mad cow disease.
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- But Patton was quoted as saying the family was worried
there might be a connection, especially after U.S. government officials
confirmed this week that BSE had been discovered for the first time in
the United States in the carcass of a butchered cow.
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- Wesley Medical Center spokeswoman Cheryle Olsen said
she would not comment on the case other than to say the family was likely
too grief-stricken to understand the situation clearly.
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- In February this year, the CDC said three outdoorsmen
who ate game animals they had killed at a cabin in northern Wisconsin,
and who later died of neurological diseases, probably did not succumb to
mad cow disease, although two of the hunters who died were diagnosed with
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.
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- The CDC said at the time that it "didn't find any
association" between the game feast and the men's development of CJD,
and that their disease was probably the naturally occurring form, not the
one caused by eating infected meat. Elk and deer in parts of the United
States get a related disease called chronic wasting disease.
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- - Additional reporting by Carey Gillam and Toni Clarke
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- Copyright © 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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