Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Portsmouth woman did not die of mad cow-related condition, USDA says UPDATE Updated Jun.17, 2008 08:34 KST

IT was the media and the womans doctor here in the USA that first reported she had human form of mad cow disease. and that's what PD NOTEBOOK and many other media outlets published, until the USDA (?) which first announced that it was not nvCJD. ...



Portsmouth woman did not die of mad cow-related condition, ___USDA___ says


By Nancy Young The Virginian-Pilot © May 7, 2008

Preliminary test results indicate that a 22-year-old Portsmouth woman who died in April did not have an illness that has been associated with eating contaminated beef, a U.S. Department of Agriculture official said this week.

"The epidemiologic characteristics of the illness and preliminary results of the neuropathologic testing of brain tissue obtained at autopsy indicate that the patient did not die of" a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), which has been associated with mad cow disease, said Richard Raymond, USDA undersecretary for food safety. He was speaking Sunday to a group of Korean and American reporters in Washington.

"The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has just provided us with that information, and I felt it was important to share with you today," he told the group. The comment appears on a statement on the safety of the U.S. beef supply that is available on the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service Web site.

Aretha Vinson died April 9 at Bon Secours Maryview Medical Center in Portsmouth. She had a degenerative brain condition that can be caused by a wide variety of things, and concerns were raised that she might have had vCJD. The state health department, CDC and the University of Virginia were involved in testing to determine the cause of death and whether it indicated a public health concern.

"There's no threat to the general public," said Michelle Peregoy, a Virginia Department of Health spokeswoman. She would not say more, citing patient confidentiality issues.

Nancy Young, (757) 446-2947, nancy.young@pilotonline.com


http://hamptonroads.com/2008/05/portsmouth-woman-did-not-die-mad-cowrelated-condition-usda-says



Virginia State University student Aretha Vinson has contracted a rare brain disorder called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a variant of Mad Cow Disease. Virginia state health officials are investigating how Vinson contracted the disease. Doctors suspect Vinson contracted the disease after having gastric bypass surgery, possibly from tainted medical instruments. Vinson's family says her health worsened after having gastric bypass surgery three months prior to the diagnosis.

UPDATE: Vinson passed away at 5:30pm on Wednesday, April 9, 2008.


http://www.mahalo.com/stub/aretha-vinson



The program, which now faces charges for playing up the possibility that the woman died of vCJD, said, “The CDC last Thursday announced the cause of death of Aretha Vinson, who died of symptoms similar to vCJD.” It quoted the CDC as saying although the suspected case received international media attention, the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center determined that the cause of death was not due to vCJD, a finding, it pointed out, that was similar to an announcement by the Department of Agriculture.


http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200806/200806170006.html




22 year old sporadic CJD ???

we will never know ;

In a telephone interview with the Chosun Ilbo, CDC spokesman Dave Daigle on Monday said the centers posted the announcement after performing their own checkup once the NPDPSC finished its investigation. He added that because the CDC only provide information on diseases, they have no plans to make a separate press release on the issue including the result of the investigation. ...


http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200806/200806170006.html




now, the cdc et al usually hide behind patient confidentiality to hide cjd cases. but in this 22 year old, confidentiality was not the case, she was well known around the world, and the cdc et al chose to hide her final diagnosis. why, because it was another young victim in the USA with sporadic CJD ???




TSS





PLEASE SEE ;



Joint Fact-Finding Mission to South Korea Final Report Seoul, South Korea July 21–24, 2008



http://material.ahrchk.net/docs/AHRC-SPR-006-2008-SouthKorea.pdf





http://minbyun.org/?module=file&act=procFileDownload&file_srl=27364&sid=0b0c8d8b3089eef17f3ae37d0d8538d2





U.S.A. HIDING MAD COW DISEASE VICTIMS AS SPORADIC CJD ? see video at bottom



http://creutzfeldt-jakob-disease.blogspot.com/2009/07/usa-hiding-mad-cow-disease-victims-as.html





U.K. BSE nvCJD ONLY theory invoked again. it's like still believing the world is flat for pete's sake i.e. the one strain, one country, one age group, one species, one route, only theory. it's pure BSe, and the stench is horrendous. it's the smell of death, for profit only.

THE UKBSEnvCJD _only_ theory is incorrect. there are more strains of mad cow than the UK BSE in beef to nvCJD in humans in the UK. The deception by the USDA, FDA, and the Bush administration about mad cow disease, CJD, and all Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy over the past 8 years have been outrageous, to a point of being criminal. I am vested in nothing, but the truth.

snip...

Please remember, the last two mad cows documented in the USA i.e. Alabama and Texas, both were of the 'atypical' BSE strain, and immediately after that, the USDA shut down the testing from 470,000 to 40,000 in the U.S. in 2007 out of about 35 million cattle slaughtered. also, science is showing that some of these atypical cases are more virulent to humans than the typical UK BSE strain ;

***Atypical forms of BSE have emerged which, although rare, appear to be more virulent than the classical BSE that causes vCJD.***

Progress Report from the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center

An Update from Stephen M. Sergay, MB, BCh & Pierluigi Gambetti, MD

April 3, 2008


http://www.aan.com/news/?event=read&article_id=4397&page=72.45.45

IF BSE is not in the USA (just not documented for many different reasons), and only atypical BSE is in the USA (plus CWD, plus, many strains of Scrapie, and Now the Nor-98 documented in 5 different states, plus TME, then why would human mad cow in the USA look like the UK nvCJD from UK BSE cows ? it was shown long ago in studies at Mission Texas that experimental transmission of USA Scrapie to USA Bovine, DID NOT LOOK LIKE UK BSE. so again, in short, why would human mad cow in the USA look like human mad cow in the UK i.e. the (nvCJD). however, I believe that BSE has been in the USA untested and undocumented for years. why on earth then does the USDA refuse to allow creekstone or anyone else test their product? simple, if you don't look/test, you don't find.

ONE only has to read how the USDA et al have legally blocked, blundered, botched, mismanaged, bungled, floundered, and flat out manipulated, the testing in the infamous June 2004 enhanced cover-up program for mad cow surveillance and testing. I mean, I am not really to hip on THE INDUSTRY, testing for mad cow disease, and what that program might consist of, but anything is better than nothing at all. ...

http://www.grassrootsnetroots.org/articles/article_12387.cfm


> since when did usda start releasing cdc data $$$

> i told you it would be anything but nvCJD $$$

> THIS case will be anything but nvCJD. how could it be? the victim never left

> the USA, and the USA does not have BSE $$$ ...TSS


USDA, CDC, NIH, ET AL INVOKE THE UKBSEnvCJD ONLY RULE $$$


Virginia Woman Did not Die of vCJD

Updated Jun.17,2008 08:34 KST

The MBC news program "PD Diary" reported that Aretha Vinson died of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) in early April when in an interview, Vinson's mother actually said, "The results had come in from the MRI and it appeared that our daughter could possibly have CJD," not vCJD.

The Center explained that as of June 2008, a total of three people were reported to have died from vCJD in the U.S. All three cases ¡°were epidemiologically linked to likely exposures to cattle products contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, commonly known as ¡®mad cow disease¡¯) while residing in the United Kingdom (two cases) or Saudi Arabia (one case).¡±

In a telephone interview with the Chosun Ilbo, CDC spokesman Dave Daigle on Monday said the centers posted the announcement after performing their own checkup once the NPDPSC finished its investigation. He added that because the CDC only provide information on diseases, they have no plans to make a separate press release on the issue including the result of the investigation.

The NPDPSC was set up by the CDC and the American Association of Neuropathologists to strengthen checks on various prion diseases. Doctors in the U.S. are recommended to take advantage of the diagnostic service provided by the NPDPSC to check the condition of patients who are suspected of contracting CJD or vCJD. "PD Diary" touched off a public uproar over the import of U.S. beef after it reported on April 29 that the woman, identified as Arlene Vinson was likely to have died of vCJD.

(englishnews@chosun.com )

http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200806/200806170006.html


He added that because the CDC only provide information on diseases, they have no plans

to make a separate press release on the issue including the result of the investigation.

and that is the way they plan to keep it, all spontaneous, sporadic, no route, no source $$$

DEEP THROAT TO TSS 2000-2001 (take these old snips of emails with how ever many grains of salt you wish. ...tss)

The most frightening thing I have read all day is the report of Gambetti's finding of a new strain of sporadic cjd in young people...Dear God, what in the name of all that is holy is that!!! If the US has different strains of scrapie.....why????than the UK...then would the same mechanisms that make different strains of scrapie here make different strains of BSE...if the patterns are different in sheep and mice for scrapie.....could not the BSE be different in the cattle, in the mink, in the humans.......I really think the slides or tissues and everything from these young people with the new strain of sporadic cjd should be put up to be analyzed by many, many experts in cjd........bse.....scrapie Scrape the damn slide and put it into mice.....wait.....chop up the mouse brain and and spinal cord........put into some more mice.....dammit amplify the thing and start the damned research.....This is NOT rocket science...we need to use what we know and get off our butts and move....the whining about how long everything takes.....well it takes a whole lot longer if you whine for a year and then start the research!!! Not sure where I read this but it was a recent press release or something like that: I thought I would fall out of my chair when I read about how there was no worry about infectivity from a histopath slide or tissues because they are preserved in formic acid, or formalin or formaldehyde.....for God's sake........ Ask any pathologist in the UK what the brain tissues in the formalin looks like after a year.......it is a big fat sponge...the agent continues to eat the brain ......you can't make slides anymore because the agent has never stopped........and the old slides that are stained with Hemolysin and Eosin......they get holier and holier and degenerate and continue...what you looked at 6 months ago is not there........Gambetti better be photographing every damned thing he is looking at.....

Okay, you need to know. You don't need to pass it on as nothing will come of it and there is not a damned thing anyone can do about it. Don't even hint at it as it will be denied and laughed at.......... USDA is gonna do as little as possible until there is actually a human case in the USA of the nvcjd........if you want to move this thing along and shake the earth....then we gotta get the victims families to make sure whoever is doing the autopsy is credible, trustworthy, and a saint with the courage of Joan of Arc........I am not kidding!!!! so, unless we get a human death from EXACTLY the same form with EXACTLY the same histopath lesions as seen in the UK nvcjd........forget any action........it is ALL gonna be sporadic!!!

And, if there is a case.......there is gonna be every effort to link it to international travel, international food, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. They will go so far as to find out if a sex partner had ever traveled to the UK/europe, etc. etc. .... It is gonna be a long, lonely, dangerous twisted journey to the truth. They have all the cards, all the money, and are willing to threaten and carry out those threats....and this may be their biggest downfall...

Thanks as always for your help. (Recently had a very startling revelation from a rather senior person in government here..........knocked me out of my chair........you must keep pushing. If I was a power person....I would be demanding that there be a least a million bovine tested as soon as possible and agressively seeking this disease. The big players are coming out of the woodwork as there is money to be made!!! In short: "FIRE AT WILL"!!! for the very dumb....who's "will"! "Will be the burden to bare if there is any coverup!"

again it was said years ago and it should be taken seriously....BSE will NEVER be found in the US! As for the BSE conference call...I think you did a great service to freedom of information and making some people feign integrity...I find it scary to see that most of the "experts" are employed by the federal government or are supported on the "teat" of federal funds. A scary picture! I hope there is a confidential panel organized by the new government to really investigate this thing.

You need to watch your back........but keep picking at them.......like a buzzard to the bone...you just may get to the truth!!! (You probably have more support than you know. Too many people are afraid to show you or let anyone else know. I have heard a few things myself... you ask the questions that everyone else is too afraid to ask.)

snip...end

CJD TEXAS

http://cjdtexas.blogspot.com/2007/12/creutzfeldt-jakob-disease-surveillance.html


This study further confirms that BASE is caused by a distinct prion isolate and discloses a novel disease phenotype in cattle, closely resembling the phenotype previous reported in scrapie-inoculated cattle

*** and in some subtypes of inherited and sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

http://www.prion2007.com/pdf/Prion%20Book%20of%20Abstracts.pdf


The Italian cases (11 and 15 years of age) originally named bovine amyloidotic spongiform encephalopathy (BASE) were characterized by an unglycosylated protein band with a lower molecular mass (thus named L cases) and the predominance of the monoglycosylated band. In addition, immunohistochemical detection of PrPres in these cases found greater deposits in the cerebral cortex and thalamus versus the brain stem. The French cases found a higher molecular mass associated with the unglycosylated protein band and were called H cases (see figure 1). *** The different "strains" are now called atypical BSE. ...

full text, skroll down to page 6 ;

http://www.usaha.org/committees/reports/2006/report-fe-2006.pdf


MAD COW DISEASE terminology UK c-BSE (typical), atypical BSE H or L, and or Italian L-BASE (the last two cases of mad cow disease in the USA were in Alabama, and Texas, both of which were atypical BSE).

http://bse-atypical.blogspot.com/2008/03/mad-cow-disease-terminology-uk-c-bse.html


Please remember, the last two mad cows documented in the USA i.e. Alabama and Texas, both were of the 'atypical' BSE strain, and immediately after that, the USDA shut down the testing from 470,000 to 40,000 in the U.S. in 2007 out of about 35 million cattle slaughtered. also, science is showing that some of these atypical cases are more virulent to humans than the typical UK BSE strain ;

***Atypical forms of BSE have emerged which, although rare, appear to be more virulent than the classical BSE that causes vCJD.***

Progress Report from the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center

An Update from Stephen M. Sergay, MB, BCh & Pierluigi Gambetti, MD

April 3, 2008

http://www.aan.com/news/?event=read&article_id=4397&page=72.45.45


WHY were they planning to destroy all CJD tissue samples donated ???

Washington Times - Washington,DC,USA NIH may destroy human brain collection

By Steve Mitchell Medical Correspondent

Washington, DC, Mar. 24 (UPI) -- The National Institutes of Health may discard part or all of a rare collection that includes hundreds of human brain samples from patients that suffered from a disorder similar to mad cow disease -- unless another researcher or institution takes them on, United Press International has learned.

Several scientists said the collection, which is held by the NIH's National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Md. -- and includes brains and other tissue samples from people afflicted with the brain-wasting illness Creutzfeldt Jakob disease -- is irreplaceable and could even provide insight into treatments for the fatal disorder.

Currently, there is no cure for CJD and patients typically die within a year after symptoms begin.

However, NIH officials in control of the collection's fate told UPI the remaining samples are of little scientific value and may be disposed of if researchers outside the agency do not claim it. That position stands in sharp contrast with CJD experts who thought the collection should be preserved.

"It's invaluable," said Dr. Paul Brown, former medical director of the NIH's Laboratory for Central Nervous System Studies, whose expertise is in CJD and mad cow disease (also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE). ...snip...end...tss

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050323-053919-8481r.htm


NIH says it will preserve CJD brains By STEVE MITCHELL

WASHINGTON, May 31 (UPI) -- The National Institutes of Health apparently has reversed its position on the fate of an invaluable collection of brains from people afflicted with a condition similar to mad cow disease, saying in a letter to a U.S. senator it will not destroy the collection.

snip...

May 10, 2005

The Honorable John Cornyn United States Senator Occidental Tower5005 LBJ Freeway, Suite 1150 Dallas, Texas 75244-6199

Dear Senator Cornyn:

Your letter to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) forwarding correspondence from Mr. Terry S. Singeltary, Sr., has been forwarded to me for reply. Mr. Singeltary is concerned about the preservation of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) brain samples that have been maintained by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) Intramural Research program for many years.

I am sorry to learn that Mr. Singeltary's mother died of CJD and can certainly understand his desire that any tissues that could help investigators unravel the puzzle of this deadly disease are preserved. I hope he will be pleased to learn that all the brains and other tissues with potential to help scientists learn about CJD are, and will continue to be, conserved. (The tissues that are discarded are those that have either decayed to an extent that renders them no longer appropriatefor research or those for which we do not have sufficient identification.) ...snip...end...tss

http://creutzfeldt-jakob-disease.blogspot.com/2008/01/cjd-hgh-body-snatchers.html


NIH says it will preserve CJD brains

Published: May 31, 2005 at 5:26 PM

By STEVE MITCHELL WASHINGTON, May 31 (UPI) -- The National Institutes of Health apparently has reversed its position on the fate of an invaluable collection of brains from people afflicted with a condition similar to mad cow disease, saying in a letter to a U.S. senator it will not destroy the collection.

An NIH official had told United Press International previously that the brain collection, which consists of samples from hundreds of people who died from the brain-wasting illness called Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, could be discarded if another entity does not claim them.

That sparked an outcry from patient-advocacy groups, consumer watchdogs and scientists, and the agency now appears to have backed away from that course.

"All the brains and other tissues with potential to help scientists learn about CJD are, and will continue to be, conserved," Story Landis, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, which oversees the brain collection, wrote in a May 10 letter to Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Cornyn had inquired about the status of the collection in April.

Last March, Eugene Major, acting director of the basic neuroscience program at the NIH, told UPI the useful portions of the collection had been doled out to scientists and the remaining samples had "very little remaining value" and could be destroyed.

Landis could not be reached for comment Tuesday. NINDS spokesman Paul Girolami told UPI he had been unable to locate her.

Scientists think the collection, which dates back to 1963, is invaluable for research on CJD and similar diseases and could even provide insight into treatments. There is no cure for CJD and patients typically die within a year after symptoms begin.

"Absolutely, the collection is worth keeping," Bruce Johnson, a former NIH scientist who said he had been told the collection would be destroyed in two years if no one took the samples from the agency, told UPI.

The Memorial Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases Inc., a non-profit organization consisting of more than 40 researchers from several countries, offered to take the collection off of NIH's hands more than a year ago and so far has not heard anything from the agency, Harry Peery, MIND's executive director, told UPI.

CJD belongs to a group of incurable and fatal diseases collectively known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or TSEs, that includes mad cow disease in cows, chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, and scrapie in sheep.

Variant CJD, or vCJD, is a relatively new TSE, which people can contract from consuming beef products infected with the mad cow pathogen.

Despite Landis' assurance the collection will be preserved, some family members of the patients who donated their brains to the NIH are still skeptical. This is because the wording Landis used in the letter leaves open the possibility that some brain samples are being destroyed.

"The tissues that are discarded are those that have either decayed to an extent that renders them no longer appropriate for research or those for which we do not have sufficient identification," Landis wrote.

"Which ones" are being destroyed? asked Terry Singeltary, who is involved with several CJD patient groups.

"With a system like this, they could destroy whatever and whenever they wanted, for whatever reason they wanted," Singeltary, whose mother died of CJD in 1997, told UPI.

"It's a perfect excuse to discard some suspicious tissue resembling vCJD or some atypical TSE related to animal TSEs in the USA," he added.

Although the collection includes samples from CJD patients as young as 16 that could make them candidates for possible vCJD, the brains have never been screened for evidence of the disease. The only confirmed vCJD case in the United States occurred in a Florida woman who is thought to have contracted the disease in England.

Johnson said he along with renowned CJD expert Paul Brown were in the process of sorting through the samples to match them up with patient identification documents until they both retired. Some of the samples may prove impossible to identify, he said, but he and Brown are the only ones familiar enough with the collection to organize it and neither has been asked back by the agency to aid in the identification process.

--

Steve Mitchell is UPI's Medical Correspondent. E-mail: sciencemail@upi.com

© 2005 United Press International. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be reproduced, redistributed, or manipulated in any form.

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Science/2005/05/31/nih_says_it_will_preserve_cjd_brains/6771/print_view/

In this context, a word is in order about the US testing program. After the discovery of the first (imported) cow in 2003, the magnitude of testing was much increased, reaching a level of >400,000 tests in 2005 (Figure 4). Neither of the 2 more recently indigenously infected older animals with nonspecific clinical features would have been detected without such testing, and neither would have been identified as atypical without confirmatory Western blots. Despite these facts, surveillance has now been decimated to 40,000 annual tests (USDA news release no. 0255.06, July 20, 2006) and invites the accusation that the United States will never know the true status of its involvement with BSE.

In short, a great deal of further work will need to be done before the phenotypic features and prevalence of atypical BSE are understood. More than a single strain may have been present from the beginning of the epidemic, but this possibility has been overlooked by virtue of the absence of widespread Western blot confirmatory testing of positive screening test results; or these new phenotypes may be found, at least in part, to result from infections at an older age by a typical BSE agent, rather than neonatal infections with new "strains" of BSE. Neither alternative has yet been investigated.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol12no12/06-0965.htm


CDC DR. PAUL BROWN TSE EXPERT COMMENTS 2006

The U.S. Department of Agriculture was quick to assure the public earlier this week that the third case of mad cow disease did not pose a risk to them, but what federal officials have not acknowledged is that this latest case indicates the deadly disease has been circulating in U.S. herds for at least a decade.

The second case, which was detected last year in a Texas cow and which USDA officials were reluctant to verify, was approximately 12 years old.

These two cases (the latest was detected in an Alabama cow) present a picture of the disease having been here for 10 years or so, since it is thought that cows usually contract the disease from contaminated feed they consume as calves. The concern is that humans can contract a fatal, incurable, brain-wasting illness from consuming beef products contaminated with the mad cow pathogen.

"The fact the Texas cow showed up fairly clearly implied the existence of other undetected cases," Dr. Paul Brown, former medical director of the National Institutes of Health's Laboratory for Central Nervous System Studies and an expert on mad cow-like diseases, told United Press International. "The question was, 'How many?' and we still can't answer that."

Brown, who is preparing a scientific paper based on the latest two mad cow cases to estimate the maximum number of infected cows that occurred in the United States, said he has "absolutely no confidence in USDA tests before one year ago" because of the agency's reluctance to retest the Texas cow that initially tested positive.

USDA officials finally retested the cow and confirmed it was infected seven months later, but only at the insistence of the agency's inspector general.

"Everything they did on the Texas cow makes everything USDA did before 2005 suspect," Brown said. ...snip...end

http://www.upi.com/

CDC - Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and Variant Creutzfeldt ... Dr. Paul Brown is Senior Research Scientist in the Laboratory of Central Nervous System ... Address for correspondence: Paul Brown, Building 36, Room 4A-05, ...

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol7no1/brown.htm

PAUL BROWN COMMENT TO ME ON THIS ISSUE

Tuesday, September 12, 2006 11:10 AM

"Actually, Terry, I have been critical of the USDA handling of the mad cow issue for some years, and with Linda Detwiler and others sent lengthy detailed critiques and recommendations to both the USDA and the Canadian Food Agency."

http://lists.ifas.ufl.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0703&L=sanet-mg&T=0&P=8125


AS implied in the Inset 25 we must not _ASSUME_ that transmission of BSE to other species will invariably present pathology typical of a scrapie-like disease.

snip...

http://www.bseinquiry.gov.uk/files/yb/1991/01/04004001.pdf


NOT to forget the 5 cases of the NOR-98 atypical scrapie documented in the USA in 2007, in five different states. WHICH pathologically looks like some sub-types of sporadic CJD, of which Stanely Prusiner warns of a public health risk ;

***The pathology features of Nor98 in the cerebellum of the affected sheep showed similarities with those of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.

http://www.prion2007.com/pdf/Prion%20Book%20of%20Abstracts.pdf


Here we report that both Nor98 and discordant cases, including three sheep homozygous for the resistant PrPARR allele (A136R154R171), efficiently transmitted the disease to transgenic mice expressing ovine PrP, and that they shared unique biological and biochemical features upon propagation in mice. These observations support the view that a truly infectious TSE agent, unrecognized until recently, infects sheep and goat flocks and may have important implications in terms of scrapie control and public health.

Edited by Stanley B. Prusiner, University of California, San Francisco, CA, and approved September 12, 2005 (received for review March 21, 2005)

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0502296102v1


http://nor-98.blogspot.com/


Tuesday, June 3, 2008

SCRAPIE USA UPDATE JUNE 2008 NOR-98 REPORTED PA

http://nor-98.blogspot.com/2008/06/scrapie-usa-update-june-2008-nor-98.html


Tuesday, June 3, 2008 SCRAPIE USA UPDATE JUNE 2008 NOR-98 REPORTED PA

http://nor-98.blogspot.com/2008/06/scrapie-usa-update-june-2008-nor-98.html


Thursday, April 03, 2008 A prion disease of cervids: Chronic wasting disease 2008

1: Vet Res. 2008 Apr 3;39(4):41

http://chronic-wasting-disease.blogspot.com/2008/04/prion-disease-of-cervids-chronic.html


Transmissible Mink Encephalopathy TME

http://transmissible-mink-encephalopathy.blogspot.com/


Communicated by: Terry S. Singeltary Sr.

[In submitting these data, Terry S. Singeltary Sr. draws attention to the steady increase in the "type unknown" category, which, according to their definition, comprises cases in which vCJD could be excluded. The total of 26 cases for the current year (2007) is disturbing, possibly symptomatic of the circulation of novel agents. Characterization of these agents should be given a high priority. - Mod.CP]

http://pro-med.blogspot.com/2007/11/proahedr-prion-disease-update-2007-07.html


http://www.promedmail.org/pls/askus/f?p=2400:1001:6833194127530602005::NO::F2400_P1001_BACK_PAGE,F2400_P1001_PUB_MAIL_ID:1010,39963


There is a growing number of human CJD cases, and they were presented last week in San Francisco by Luigi Gambatti(?) from his CJD surveillance collection.

He estimates that it may be up to 14 or 15 persons which display selectively SPRPSC and practically no detected RPRPSC proteins.

http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/06/transcripts/1006-4240t1.htm


http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/06/transcripts/2006-4240t1.pdf


2008

The statistical incidence of CJD cases in the United States has been revised to reflect that there is one case per 9000 in adults age 55 and older. Eighty-five percent of the cases are sporadic, meaning there is no known cause at present.

http://www.cjdfoundation.org/fact.html


Journal of American Medical Association

Diagnosis and Reporting of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Singeltary, Sr et al. JAMA.2001; 285: 733-734. Vol. 285 No. 6, February 14, 2001 JAMA

Diagnosis and Reporting of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease

To the Editor: In their Research Letter, Dr Gibbons and colleagues1 reported that the annual US death rate due to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) has been stable since 1985. These estimates, however, are based only on reported cases, and do not include misdiagnosed or preclinical cases. It seems to me that misdiagnosis alone would drastically change these figures. An unknown number of persons with a diagnosis of Alzheimer disease in fact may have CJD, although only a small number of these patients receive the postmortem examination necessary to make this diagnosis. Furthermore, only a few states have made CJD reportable. Human and animal transmissible spongiform encephalopathies should be reportable nationwide and internationally.

Terry S. Singeltary, Sr Bacliff, Tex

1. Gibbons RV, Holman RC, Belay ED, Schonberger LB. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the United States: 1979-1998. JAMA. 2000;284:2322-2323. FREE FULL TEXT

http://jama.ama-assn.org/


2 January 2000 British Medical Journal

U.S. Scientist should be concerned with a CJD epidemic in the U.S., as well

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/320/7226/8/b#6117


15 November 1999 British Medical Journal vCJD in the USA * BSE in U.S.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/319/7220/1312/b#5406


JOURNAL OF NEUROLOGY

MARCH 26, 2003

RE-Monitoring the occurrence of emerging forms of Creutzfeldt-Jakob

disease in the United States

Email Terry S. Singeltary:

flounder@wt.net

I lost my mother to hvCJD (Heidenhain Variant CJD). I would like to comment on the CDC's attempts to monitor the occurrence of emerging forms of CJD. Asante, Collinge et al [1] have reported that BSE transmission to the 129-methionine genotype can lead to an alternate phenotype that is indistinguishable from type 2 PrPSc, the commonest sporadic CJD. However, CJD and all human TSEs are not reportable nationally. CJD and all human TSEs must be made reportable in every state and internationally. I hope that the CDC does not continue to expect us to still believe that the 85%+ of all CJD cases which are sporadic are all spontaneous, without route/source. We have many TSEs in the USA in both animal and man. CWD in deer/elk is spreading rapidly and CWD does transmit to mink, ferret, cattle, and squirrel monkey b y intracerebral inoculation. With the known incubation periods in other TSEs, oral transmission studies of CWD may take much longer. Every victim/family of CJD/TSEs should be asked about route and source of this agent. To prolong this will only spread the agent and needlessly expose others. In light of the findings of Asante and Collinge et al, there should be drastic measures to safeguard the medical and surgical arena from sporadic CJDs and all human TSEs. I only ponder how many sporadic CJDs in the USA are type 2 PrPSc?

http://www.neurology.org/cgi/eletters/60/2/176#535


http://www.cjdsupport.net/ Newsletter issue 17 april 2008

the importance of gene types

We have known for many years that a common variation in a gene, known as the prion protein gene, is very important in determining the risk of developing prion diseases and how long it takes for the disease to develop when someone becomes infected. There are three genetic types in the UK population known as MM, VV and MV. So far, vCJD has only affected people with MM genetic type. Around 40% of healthy people in the UK are MM, about 50% are MV and around 10% are VV. It is likely that BSE prions will infect people of the VV and MV types also, but they may have much longer incubation periods (the time taken from being infected with prions until the brain disease becomes apparent) and may also develop a pattern of disease which may be different to vCJD. We suspect this again as result of research in laboratory mice wher e those that had the VV and MV genes had a different type of disease and different types or ‘strains’ of prions developed.

snip...

This unusual finding reminds us of the importance of keeping alert to the possibility that BSE prions will cause disease in individuals with different genetic types, who may develop a disease that may resemble sporadic CJD, or vCJD, or have a new pattern of disease.

Prion disease and gene types

Dr Simon Mead and Professor John Collinge, NHS National Prion Clinic

Reference: Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, Prion Protein Gene Codon 129VV, and a Novel PrPSc Type in a Young British Woman Simon Mead; Susan Joiner; Melanie Desbruslais; Jonathan A. Beck; Michael O’ Donoghue; Peter Lantos; Jonathan D. F. Wadsworth; John Collinge Arch Neurol. 2007;64(12):1780-1784.

http://creutzfeldt-jakob-disease.blogspot.com/2008/01/creutzfeldt-jakob-disease-prion-protein.html


CJD QUESTIONNAIRE

http://cjdquestionnaire.blogspot.com/


THE PATHOLOGICAL PROTEIN

Hardcover, 304 pages plus photos and illustrations. ISBN 0-387-95508-9

June 2003

BY Philip Yam

CHAPTER 14 LAYING ODDS

Answering critics like Terry Singeltary, who feels that the U.S. under- counts CJD, Schonberger conceded that the current surveillance system has errors but stated that most of the errors will be confined to the older population.

http://www.thepathologicalprotein.com/


2008

The statistical incidence of CJD cases in the United States has been revised to reflect that there is one case per 9000 in adults age 55 and older. Eighty-five percent of the cases are sporadic, meaning there is no known cause at present.

http://www.cjdfoundation.org/fact.html


Wednesday, June 11, 2008

OIE Recognition of the BSE Status of Members RESOLUTION No. XXI (Adopted by the International Committee of the OIE on 27 May 2008)

* 67th General Session (GS) Resolution No (Res) XVI and Res XI; 69th GS Res XV, and 71st GS Res XXII, 72nd GS Res XXIV and Res XXI..

http://www.oie.int/eng/info/en_statesb.htm?e1d6


IN A NUT SHELL ;

(Adopted by the International Committee of the OIE on 23 May 2006)

11. Information published by the OIE is derived from appropriate declarations made by the official Veterinary Services of Member Countries. The OIE is not responsible for inaccurate publication of country disease status based on inaccurate information or changes in epidemiological status or other significant events that were not promptly reported to the Central Bureau,

http://www.oie.int/eng/Session2007/RF2006.pdf


bought and paid for by your local cattle dealer $$$

IN my opinion the WOAH/OIE is nothing more than a organized bunch of lobbyist for the members Countries in support of there INDUSTRY, bound together as one, with the only purpose of open trade for there precious commodities and futures. Speaking only of BSE, they failed at every corner, and then just said to hell with it, well just trade all strains of TSE globally.

snip...

NOW, ask yourself why not one single mad cow has been documented in the USA since the Honorable Phyllis Fong of the OIG did the end around Johanns, Dehaven et al ??? found two atypical BSE or BASE cases and they flat shut it down i tell you. IF the OIE gives a favorable rating, IF the OIE gives any other rating but the lowest, poorest possible BSE/TSE rating, the OIE will have sealed there fate once and for all, because most of the world knows the truth about the USA and there mad cows. THE OIE will then be able to stand side by side with the USA, and proudly claim to have sold there soul to the devil, all for a buck, commodities and futures, to hell with human health. A 'CONTROLLED' RATING IS EXACTLY what the OIE will get if that is what they classify the USA as a 'CONTROLLED RATING'. IT will be controlled by Johanns, Dehaven, and GW. IT WILL BE RIGGED in other words. but that is nothing new, it's been rigged for years. ...

snip...SEE FULL TEXT with facts and sources @ ;

http://usdavskorea.blogspot.com/2008/06/oie-recognition-of-bse-status-of.html


http://organicconsumers.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=1566


sporadic CJD in two adolescents (sCJD, the big lie)

http://brain.hastypastry.net/forums/showthread.php?t=15076


http://brain.hastypastry.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-17057.html


see full text sporadic CJD the big lie;

http://lists.ifas.ufl.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0705&L=sanet-mg&T=0&P=25276


http://cjdusa.blogspot.com/2007/11/cjd-surveillance-uk-fifteenth-annual.html


Terry S. Singeltary Sr. P.O. Box 42 Bacliff, Texas USA 77518

=====================TSS 2008=====================


----- Original Message ----- From: "Terry S. Singeltary Sr." To: Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2008 5:55 PM Subject: [BSE-L] re-Portsmouth woman did not die of mad cow-related condition, USDA says

Portsmouth woman did not die of mad cow-related condition, USDA says Posted to: Health and Medicine News Portsmouth

hi nancy,

since when did usda start releasing cdc data $$$

i told you it would be anything but nvCJD $$$

was it sporadic CJD ???

----- Original Message ----- From: "Terry S. Singeltary Sr." To: Sent: Monday, May 05, 2008 3:47 PM Subject: STATEMENT OF DR. RICHARD RAYMOND USDA UNDERSECRETARY FOR FOOD SAFETY Regarding the Safety of the U.S. Food Supply May 4, 2008

Monday, May 5, 2008 STATEMENT OF DR. RICHARD RAYMOND USDA UNDERSECRETARY FOR FOOD SAFETY May 4, 2008

STATEMENT OF DR. RICHARD RAYMOND USDA UNDERSECRETARY FOR FOOD SAFETY Regarding the Safety of the U.S. Food Supply

May 4, 2008

"Good evening. I am Dr. Richard Raymond, Under Secretary for Food Safety at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss with you the safety of the U.S. beef supply. I want to be sure that you are aware that I will be discussing food safety issues only, and I am not here this evening to discuss negotiations. "The U.S. Government believes the current agreement well addresses the health and food safety concerns of Korean consumers. It provides for Korea's sovereign right to conduct an audit of our facilities and to work with USDA inspection authorities if any food safety concerns are identified. When the OIE gave the United States "controlled risk" status a year ago, it was after the world's BSE experts reviewed the preventative and food safety measures in the United States. "Since the requirements to export to Korea are consistent with science, U.S. requirements as well as those of the OIE require that if any food safety concern is found, it would be fully investigated and immediately corrected by USDA. "I want to assure all consumers - both domestic and abroad - that the U.S. beef supply is among the safest in the world. ...

*please* see full text with some additional information the good Dr. Raymond

seems to have forgotten about. it's about your children. ...

http://usdameatexport.blogspot.com/2008/05/statement-of-dr-richard-raymond-usda.html


Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Health group urges overhaul of US food safety system Calling the US food safety system antiquated and disjointed, a public health advocacy group today urged a major overhaul to make the system stronger, more coherent, and better attuned to today's major threats.

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/fs/food-disease/news/apr3008tfah.html


Progress Report from the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center April 3, 2008

Progress Report from the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center

An Update from Stephen M. Sergay, MB, BCh & Pierluigi Gambetti, MD

April 3, 2008

Dear Member:

Once again we are writing to thank you for your continued support in enhancing surveillance of prion diseases in the United States and to bring you up to date on the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center (NPDPSC).

In large part because of your support, the number of cases examined by biopsy, autopsy and 14-3-3 protein determination has increased significantly over the years (see Tables 1 and 2). We are now able to establish a definitive diagnosis of prion disease in an estimated 60-70% of the cases in the United States, a percentage which exceeds that in even some major surveillance centers. In addition, we receive from you cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for 14-3-3 determination, a surrogate protein which is helpful in the diagnosis of prion disease, probably in most if not all cases of suspected Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). We are making constant efforts to reach our goal of at least 80% definitively diagnosed cases.

The major obstacle to our further increasing the autopsy rate remains the inadequate reporting of suspected cases of CJD to the NPDPSC or to the State Health Department, which in turn would notify us. Since you are the one likely to request the 14-3-3 test on these cases, please include in your request the information needed to contact you, which we will do if the test proves positive. If your institution uses a referral laboratory to send us the CSF, please provide your name, phone, and fax numbers to the lab, which will in turn submit it to us along with the sample. If this information is missing in the request accompanying the CSF sample (as it happens in about 30% of the cases), we will be unable to contact the caregiving physician. Having your contact information would also allow us to send results directly to you, thus reducing turnaround times. ...

snip...

Prion surveillance in cattle has been reduced by 90% (from about 470,000 to 40,000 in the U.S. in 2007 out of about 35 million cattle slaughtered). Termination of human prion surveillance would therefore remove the second line of surveillance, thereby eliminating prion surveillance in the U.S. entirely. This development would be extremely worrisome in view of recent reports that precautions to limit the spread of the prion infectious agent may not have been followed in some slaughter houses in the U.S. Cattle affected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) continue to be discovered in Canada, which has more rigorous BSE surveillance than the U.S. At the same time, Canada imposes few limitations in the trade of potentially prion-infectious cattle with the U.S.

snip...

Atypical forms of BSE have emerged which, although rare, appear to be more virulent than the classical BSE that causes vCJD.

please see full text with additional comments and links @ ;

http://prionunitusaupdate2008.blogspot.com/


Another Young Suspect Vcjd Case In Usa (3rd In Recent Weeks), TRANSMISSIBLE SPONGIFORM ENCEPHALOPATHY

THESE cases that have come about recently in the very young are most disturbing.

a 22 year old last week died, she is suspect nvCJD. never left US. PORTSMOUTH, Va. -- A 22-year-old Portsmouth woman is close to dying, and family says doctors believe the human equivalent of Mad Cow Disease could be the reason.

another young female suspect nvCJD that is 26 years old in Alabama, She is in the final stages of CJD. She is at home in a hospital bed...very skinny...and at times in the past month has had some eating and swallowing issues. Sometimes she rallies and starts eating again. She stopped walking at Christmas. they do not expect her to live much longer than May, since that would be 14 months since her first major symptom of CJD (personal communication).

AND now, a 3rd young female, 23 years old. hmmm, i am pondering about just how long all those downers were in the school lunch program, and IS the incubation period catching up now ??? is this a first of many more to come ???

see full text ;

http://organicconsumers.org/forum/index.php?s=71e4aa3ad5237e46d182cdfcdd167cb0&showtopic=1413&pid=5798&st=0&#entry5798


Terry S. Singeltary Sr. P.O. Box 42 Bacliff, Texas USA 77518

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