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medication which can cure or allay the cruelty of human or ani- By this stage, the medico-scientific fraternity was intensely pre- mal death from the diseases. occupied with another incurable brain illness, kuru, which had In humans, outward warning symptoms only emerge after a reached epidemic proportions amongst the Fore people living in prolonged incubation period that, in iatrogenic cases which have the highlands of New Guinea. Anthropologists from the occurred as a result of human pituitary growth and infertility hor- University of Adelaide unravelled a chain of events to trace the mone injections or contaminated surgical materials, has ranged origin of kuru back to the reverent consumption of deceased tribal from as few as two to as many as 40 years. members' bodies. Kuru was essentially eradicated by New By that stage, the agent of CJD has already turned the brain into Guinean authorities acting in 1959 on the anthropological clue to the sponge-like mass that led this group of diseases to be classi- outlaw the eating of human flesh. However, the 1976 Nobel Prize fied as "spongiform slow-virus disorders" in the first instance. went to American scientist Carleton Gajdusek for his experiments Death may be a welcome escape from the involuntary jerking demonstrating that injections of kuru brain (1967) and CJD brain motions which accompany CJD which, while silently eating away (1969) reproduced similar illnesses in chimpanzees.* Gajdusek at the brain over years, has robbe: was placed behind bars in 1997 after humans of their every means of com- being found guilty of molesting one munication—the ability to hear, see the numerous New Guinean youths and speak. Gone, too, is the under- ... humans infected with the new he has sponsored into the United standing of written and spoken native . . States over the previous 30 years; language, and with it every scrap of | Variant of CJD coming from BSE- however, his research did put an end dignity. . . to ideas that species barriers were an Similarly, BSE has no respect for infected meat may spread their impediment to the spread of this type cattle decorum, and a furnace is the CJD via blood donation, thereby of disease. fate of confused and trembling ani- Two neuroscientists, Laura and mals that the disease has deprived of hastening the globalisation of the (the late) Eli Manuelides, from Yale their own legs on which to stand. European mad-cow dilemma. University in the US, went on to illustrate by 1975 that injections of TRACING THE TRANSMISSION human blood, like injections of brain ROUTES OF BRAIN DISEASES taken from kuru and CJD victims, The original lesson about the infec- transmitted the disease across the tious nature of these brain diseases came from a 1934 vaccine cat- species barrier to laboratory animals.*° Their prophetic, but astrophe in the UK which brought scrapie, or "mad sheep dis- unheeded, message implied that blood was the vehicle that carried ease", to almost 5,000 out of 18,000 lambs within two years of the agent of CJD around the body until it chanced upon an hos- their immunisation against louping-ill virus infection. Tracing pitable residence like the brain. This meant that the blood route back, scientists discovered that the vaccine serum was prepared was the key to the transmission of CJD from a primary host to a from a number of lambs whose dams had subsequently developed secondary host. As distinct from infections such as influenza scrapie, but the significance of scrapie passing vertically from (which is caused by an airborne virus), but in parallel with AIDS ewes to their lambs, and horizontally from lamb to lamb by virtue and hepatitis B (which are caused by bloodborne viruses), this of the vaccine injections, was kept from international eyes by a indicated that recipients exposed to human pituitary gland hor- series of egotistical carry-ons which prevented the data from mone injections, or to blood or organ transplants from a donor reaching the pages of the scientific literature for a further 15 with CJD, risked becoming secondary CJD hosts once contagious years.’ material entered their bloodstreams. Similarly, as the UK By then, as the 1950s dawned, mad sheep disease was shown in = Government admitted on 7 October 1997,' humans infected with the United States to jump the species barrier when a scrapie- the new variant of CJD coming from BSE-infected meat may infected food supplement brought a similar brain illness to farm- spread their CJD via blood donation, thereby hastening the global- raised mink in 1947.* isation of the European mad-cow dilemma. Even as the under- standing of spongiform encephalopathy ALMONGLLP t _ Ca ——-~— gZ See Crane increased, various NeN-sALMOneLtA 2 lee aM, — | 6) O human pituitary hor- 2 ‘orf H/F LN EZ é & 7 mone programs in coun- N —_ ) eS ip AS’ he eile 2 if a, tries such as Australia, t}, 7 DG ee. Mes a Cpe i France, New Zealand, i the United Kingdom and United States were attracting hefty govern- ment sponsorships. Few of the programs’ stalwarts caught on to the implications of the Manuelides' experi- ments, and unsuccessful attempts between the years of 1978 and 1982’ ¢ SALMONELLA — —_—— Coren) LA2 — ta 45 Sek fact ie (2 {o] a | a4 Vey VT os tye) yi j 2404 Biss : Mali 7 C4 a 12 - NEXUS ..humans infected with the new DECEMBER 1997 - JANUARY 1998