This page from the CDC includes a brief summary of the laboratory evidence for a vCJD-BSE link. It doesn’t get into details; for that I suggest poking around the Nature archive. A quick glance at the results of a search on “BSE” threw up lots of experimental papers on links between the two (unfortunately, you’ll have to subscribe to see the texts). Feel free to disagree with their conclusions if you want, but it’s somewhat extreme these days to assert that there’s no evidence of a link.
I do not disagree with the argument that there may be a link between BSE and vCJD. But the key word is MAY. Sakurako provides a long list of possible links under investigation. If there is any link between any of the huge range of possible causes, then shouldn’t we be dying in our thousands from cVJD?
My skepticism arises from the very low number of cases and the huge range of possible causes for infection that are regularly quoted. IMHO the actual hard data available does not show a link between vCJD and BSE. That the diseases are very similar and that there may be a link is not in dispute. What I have my doubts about is the case for proving a link, based on the numbers of people potentially infected against the actual number of cases.
It may be that a rare genetic predisposition or some unknown environmental factor is required as well as exposure but that is a guess on my part. It is as as good an explanation of the low number of cases against the high level of exposure as any I’ve heard, and it took me about ten seconds to come up with it.
I follow up the links Bonzer supplied and see if they help.
Anyway, thank you all for your contributions. I hope nobody has been put off beef…
I am no SE expert, but could the seemingly low figures Yeah quotes reflect inexperience in diagnosing the disease? And call me cynical, but I bet that if NVCJD appeared here in the USA, there would be a huge amount of pressure to reclassify and deny it, like the denial and downplaying of the pfisteria problem on the eastern seaboard.
I too wonder about prions and what the link to humans might be. But there does seem to be some correlation between BSE and NVCJD: Countries that have identified (and admitted) BSE outbreaks seem to have NVCJD following on, countires without BSE don’t seem to have it… while that might be a simple case of identification and admitting the facts, other countries like Italy and Poland that just lately identified their first BSE cases are also just identifying their first NVCJD patients.
As a totally inexpert bystander, I have to go with the “rare genetic predisposition (and/)or some unknown environmental factor… as well as exposure” idea (modified to include the possibility of some as-yet unidentified not-so-infectious agent), but basically we also have to go with the caveat that we have insufficient data to know how “rare” of a genetic predisposition, what the environmental factor(s) is/are, what the level of exposure is, or what the infectious agents (if any) could be.