I live 40 miles down valley from Mabton WA where the Mad Cow was reported found.  This morning the local paper says some guy kicked-off from Mad Cow.
www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/4552332p-4526738c.html
Rare disease killed Tri-City man

This story was published Thursday, December 25th, 2003

By Brent Champaco Herald staff writer

The family of Dennis Jean Willett has waited four years to learn how he contracted Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

The rare disease, which can be caused by consuming meat infected with mad cow disease, ate away at the Kennewick man's brain for four months, leaving the family to watch helplessly as he died Aug. 27, 1999.

As his body deteriorated, Willett's pain and dizziness got so bad that he was taken to Kadlec Medical Center in Richland. Doctors didn't know what was causing his condition, so he was flown in late April 1999 to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Doctors at the state's main trauma hospital conducted numerous tests, but even they couldn't determine what was wrong. A sample of Willett's spinal tissue was sent to the National Institutes of Health in Maryland for testing, his family said.

Experts there determined Willett had Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, but they don't know exactly how he contracted it.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is an incurable brain-wasting condition that is rare in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Worldwide, 153 cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob that were caused by mad cow disease have been recorded, with all but 10 in the United Kingdom.

The announcement that mad cow disease was discovered in a Holstein cow from Mabton on Tuesday prompted Willett's family to share what can happen when it spreads to a human.

The neurological deterioration of the former nuclear engineer and Battelle employee began in the spring of 1999, family members said.

Willett, who stood about 6 feet tall and weighed about 230 pounds, began showing signs that he was losing his balance. A neurologist said he suffered a stroke because he was dragging his left foot and not using his left arm.

He came home, but still complained that his body wasn't right. Lisa Vega, Willett's 25-year-old daughter who today lives in Kennewick, recalled how he'd stumble over things he should have easily cleared. She also recalled how her father's visual depth perception was off.

"We'd be driving, and he'd be like, 'You're way too far over (the line),'" she said. "But I wasn't."

By early May 1999, it was clear the disease was winning the battle.

"His functions just started deteriorating," Vega said.

Willett could barely walk or speak. He shook and twitched uncontrollably, so he had to be fastened to his bed.

Doctors finally gave the family a difficult ultimatum.

"They told me, 'This is fatal,' " Mary Willett said. "If you put a feeding tube in him, he's going to die in a couple months. If you don't put a feeding tube in, he'll die within the week.

"I chose the feeding tube because I didn't want to play God," she said.

Willett eventually was taken to a hospice house in Kennewick, where he lived for about three months until he died.

"There wasn't anything we could do," his widow said.

After he died, nobody wanted to perform an autopsy because they feared the disease could spread. However, experts at the University of California-San Francisco wanted his brain for research, the family said.

The organ was taken to California, and his body was cremated in Seattle, according to a copy of his death certificate. The document states the cause of death was Creutzfeldt-Jakob.

The cremation temperature for Willett was almost twice as high as normal for fear of contamination, his widow said. His ashes were buried at a veterans memorial in Portland.

The family said the brain still is at the university, although officials there weren't available for comment Wednesday night.

Watching Willett die was difficult, his family said. His widow now lives in Corvallis and is taking care of her parents.

Two of his daughters, Amy and Ann, attend Oregon State University, his alma matter. Today, Vega and Matthew Willett, his son, live in the Mid-Columbia.

"To describe how he died, take the worst horror movie you've ever seen," said Ernie Vega, Lisa's husband. "It's like that. ... The people were saying it was the worst thing they had ever seen."

Doctors told the family that the disease wasn't inherited, and Willett never had a blood transfusion that could have caused it.

Although officials haven't said whether infected meat led to Willett's death, since he died neither Mary Willett nor the Vega family have eaten beef. The Vega family had Swedish meatballs made from ground-up turkey and pork for Christmas Eve dinner.

Family members said they didn't want to create a scare or keep people from eating beef. They just want to let them know that the possibility of infection is out there, especially because it's so hard to kill.

"It's kind of like playing a crappy lottery," Lisa Vega said. "You have a small chance of winning, but you still don't want to."

Man, I'm writing my will and non-resuscitation clause and giving it to a lawyer soon.  There would be no way in HELL I would go out that way.

Local "Tony Roma's" Rib Joint stops serving US Beef. [xx(] I don't know what the hell they have to serve now? [:(!]

[url]http://www.tri-cityherald.com/[/url]

This guy died 4 years before the cow did, the question is how did he give it to the cow?  Can it be transmitted sexually?

This appears to be the local Ranch where the fun started.  [url]http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/4552329p-4526735c.html[/url]

vCJD aka Mad Cow's disease has an incubation period of 10 years. To me, this sounds more like ebola.

[chicken little] The Shy Is FallIng!!!!![/chicken little]


One stinking case and people go nuts. We've ahd a couple people in this state that turned up with CJD that was be fore CWD was found in hte deer heard. When after it was found all the CJD cases came up in papers and such and people were freaking out even though there was no evidance that CWD can cross over to humans like the bovine form can.

One case does not make and epidemic. Now had it been like 20 or 30 cows to begin with I might be a little worried. Right now it's an isolated incident.
Hell it was probably an imported cow from Canada they just had some turn up a couple months back IIRC. Damn canucks![;D]

The only way to get this desease, is to consume a portion of the cattle that this desease effects, which in this case, is either the spinal cord, or,,,, the brain.

I'll bet you he liked eating calf brians, and the infected calf brains he ate back in 99'were imported.

That's one habit I'm glad I never picked up while living in Texas.

Jay

If I EVER get Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, anyone on this board is welcome to come to my house and shoot me in the head repeatedly.

Just show this note to my fiancee/wife [:D]

Never mind that hotdogs and the rest of that "tube meat" stuff is made up of the lips, assholes, hooves and whatever else is left...like brains, CNS parts...get the idea.

Got it.

Just repeating what I read in a CDC/USDA article.

Would it be a issue of how the meat is cooked?

When I did eat red meat, I used to have them put it on the grill for 1 minute one side, and one minute the other, and bring that mooing thing out to me.

The meat might have to be burnt to a crisp to be safe.

I feel like chicken tonight.

Jay

This is BS.


This is more like it.


This too is BS. They don't know exactly how it is spread. They have not much clue as to the specific incubation period even. How can you finger ONE item consumed possibly a decade before?
My Dad died of CJD. The doctors at the state hospital told us they get about 8-10 cases/year from a 3 state area. Also, some cases don't get diagnosed properly because it requires a brain sample to diagnose. Also, not all cases progress rapidly, so some dementia patients never get diagnosed properly.
Move along, nothing to see.

there is most definitely reason to be concerned. I put out a fair amount of info in an earlier thread about this and am not going to keep repeating it. I will try to hotlink it later when I have time or maybe someone else could.

Perhaps the [red]mods[/red] could take my info, as well as that of sloth, who doesn't fully agree with me, and create a madcow/vCJD thread with it. Might be easiest way of getting the info out.

It has been predicted, with this years strong strain, that 50,000 Americans will die from the flu. There have been 153 cases of BSE related CJD, WORLDWIDE!!!!! And there are 100,000's of pounds of beef consumed daily!

Its all a bunch of media hype to scare the sheeple  [:\]

No kidding.  

Not very different from shark attacks and west nile virus.

Prions, the organism that causes the disease, cannot be killed by cooking.  It is found in all parts of the infected animal, not just the brain, and spinal cells. Nobody knows why some people get infected, while others don't.
There is ALOT that is simply unknown about it.  

10 year incubation? Maybe everyone's infected and it's a countdown to extinction.