ABSTRACT
CONTENTS 15.1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 430
15.1.1 Scrapie......................................................................................... 430 15.1.2 BSE............................................................................................... 430 15.1.3 Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease ........................................ 431 15.1.4 North America .......................................................................... 433 15.1.5 Transmissible Mink Encephalopathy .................................... 436 15.1.6 Chronic Wasting Disease......................................................... 436
15.2 Simple Semiempirical Model of the United Kingdom Epizootic ... 437 15.2.1 United Kingdom Epizootic and Passive Surveillance ........ 437 15.2.2 Control Engineering Model .................................................... 439 15.2.3 Results......................................................................................... 441 15.2.4 Active Surveillance and Post-Epizootic Artifacts................ 443
15.3 Passive Surveillance and the EU Testing Experience....................... 445 15.3.1 The EU Passive and Active Surveillance Results................ 445 15.3.2 An Efficacy Model for Passive Surveillance ........................ 446 15.3.3 Results and Discussion ............................................................ 447 15.3.4 Inferences for BSE-Free and BSE Low-Risk Countries....... 449
15.4 The vCJD Epidemic ................................................................................ 451 15.4.1 Causal Connection of vCJD to BSE........................................ 451 15.4.2 Case A: vCJD Is Not Caused by BSE .................................... 451 15.4.3 Case B: vCJD Caused by BSE, but the Epidemic
Is Declining ................................................................................ 455 15.4.4 Case C: vCJD Was Caused by BSE, and There Will Be
New Outbreaks in the Future................................................. 456 15.4.5 An Inconvenient Truth ............................................................ 456
15.5 BSE and International Trade................................................................. 456 15.5.1 International Guidelines .......................................................... 457 15.5.2 ‘‘Science Goes Out the Door, When Politics
Comes Innuendo’’..................................................................... 457 15.5.3 Consumers: A Modest Proposal............................................. 458
15.6 Conclusions.............................................................................................. 459 15.7 Acknowledgments .................................................................................. 460 References ........................................................................................................... 460
Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) have become a household word over the last 15 years, and have destroyed major parts of the beef market throughout the world. Starting with ‘‘scrapie’’ or OSE (ovine spongiform encephalopathy) in sheep, discovered some 200 years ago in the United Kingdom, successively CJD in humans (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease), TME in minks (transmissible mink encephalopathy), BSE in cattle (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease) and CWD in deer and elk (chronic wasting disease) have been discovered.
