I am cow,
Hear me moo,
I weigh twice as much as you
& I look good on the barbeque
Milk, cream, cheese and butter,
are all made using liquid from my udders
While i taste so so good,
whether stir-friend, boiled or stewed
I've got a disease called mad cow,
and people are starting to shun me now
BSE bovine spongiform encephalopathy,
is the scientic name for the disease in me
The proteins in my brain are starting to go wrong,
I'll die soon, it won't be long
People who consume me will be infected,
they won't remain unaffected
In UK 170,000 people got the BSE
And in the end they all mati
While there are no cures, no treatments, no vaccines
and people now eat chicken as an alternative means,
There are a few ways to prevent this disease,
So that this epidemic can cease
Firstly, avoid products that may contain my spinal cord and tissue,
they will just increase the risk in you
Secondly, find alternative means,
such as fish, chicken, or even beans
Lastly, which i think is the best solution,
go green, the risk will be low and it will reduce pollution!
This post is about the medium in which through the Mad Cow Disease is transmitted. More to come later.
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Firstly,
the mad cow disease is a prion disease, a large group of related conditions affecting the nervous system, affecting both animals and humans. Examples of prion diseases include the
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and the
Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker (GSS) disease.
Prions?
One of the reasons why the mad cow disease is so dangerous is because it’s transmissible agents are not bacteria, nor viruses but are “prions”, basically
infectious proteins that are highly resistant to heat, radiation, ultraviolet light and disinfectants that normally kill bacteria and viruses. Even cooking meat containing these prions would not be able to eliminate them. Therefore it is extremely dangerous to humans, as consuming tissue containing these prions can infect them with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) or new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (nvCJD), which actually the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (the scientific name, meaning sick brain) or BSE in cattle.
Prions are abnormal proteins that eat away at the brain and create tiny holes in parts of the brain, which make the brain have a sponge-like quality. These so-called spongy holes cause slow deterioration within the cattle brain, and eventually symptoms affecting the whole body, eventually causing death in the cattle.
All in all, prions are what basically cause these diseases that affect the nervous system, primarily the brain, causing characteristic sponge-like holes in the brain tissue. They are hardy, resistant to heat, radiation and disinfectants, hence not easy to destroy.
The picture below shows cross-sections of brain tissue of:
1)Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in Humans
2)Kuru Disease in Humans
3)Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy in Cattle
4)Scrapie in Sheep
These are all prion diseases, notice the characteristic white holes in all of the pictures. The prions cause these sponge-like holes to form in the brain tissue.
Where are Prions found?
Diseased prions are found in the brain, spinal cord, the eye (in the retina), and other tissues of the nervous system of affected animals or humans. In addition, prions can be found outside the nervous system including the bone marrow, spleen, and lymph nodes. Low levels of prions may also be found in blood.
However it is difficult to detect them through blood-testing, therefore there is the case of people who lived in the UK and in European countries such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Norway, Sweden and Yugoslavia from 1980 to the present not being allowed to donate blood in the United States, under 2002 guidelines from the United States Food and Drug Administration, as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and resulting cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans have been previously diagnosed there.
This measure is to prevent the Mad Cow Disease from being transmitted through the tranfusion of blood.
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Post #1 by SEAH QIAN YE (18)
mad cows! signed off at 10:30 PM
