Real and Theoretical Threats to Human Health Posed by the Epidemic of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy

Abstract

This chapter discusses the question of whether or not food, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics derived from animal tissues may pose a danger to human health. More specifically, can any of these products transmit Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), or a variant thereof, to humans? The initial conclusions are straightforward: there is no solid evidence that they do, but there is theoretical evidence that they could. Because the question involves a form of human CJD, I will define the disease and the problems in diagnosis, review the evidence that CJD can be transmitted from human to human by different tissues and by different routes of inoculation, and note the absence of evidence of transmission from animal to man despite the formidable experience with intraspecies transmission of other spongiform encephalopathies among nonhuman species.