June 21, 2004 United Press International By STEVE MITCHELL

Charlene Singh, of Fort Lauderdale, died early Sunday morning from complications due to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, said her aunt, Sharon Singh-Passley.

The disease known as vCJD is a fatal, incurable brain disorder humans can acquire from eating meat infected with the mad cow pathogen.

Singh, 25, had fought the disease for more than two years after being diagnosed with it in April 2002. Health authorities concluded that Singh, who lived in the United Kingdom until she was 12, had contracted the disease while in England and therefore her illness was not due to consumption of U.S. beef.

Although the family knew Charlene eventually would succumb to vCJD, the timing of the death caught them off guard, because she had been doing well recently. In a vegetative state requiring round the clock care, Charlene nevertheless appeared to be in stable condition and the family had undergone their usual routine with her Saturday night.

"We didn't expect it to be yesterday," Singh-Passley told UPI. "We didn't expect to wake up in the morning and find her gone. It was definitely an utter shock."

Singh-Passley said she hoped Charlene's death would spur the United States government to conduct more tests for mad cow disease and prevent another human from contracting the fatal disorder.

"Charlene suffered an awful, awful, awful death," she said. "I'd hate to have to say one day, 'I told you so.' That would be my biggest regret."

In an interview conducted prior to Charlene's death, her father, Patrick Singh, told UPI he thought American citizens were not paying much attention to mad cow disease because the media have not done a better job of clarifying the danger it poses to humans.

"The media (are) afraid of the (U.S. Department of Agriculture), the meatpacking companies and fast food corporations," Singh said, making mention of libel and disparagement charges a group of Texas cattlemen had brought -- unsuccessfully -- against television show host Oprah Winfrey for discussing the risk of mad cow in U.S. beef on a 1996 show.

"I think the American public is really ignorant about what's going on, because it's been kept from them," he said. Even after the detection of the first U.S. case in Washington state in December 2003, the reaction has been minimal, he said. Singh-Passley agreed.

"The impact of the cow in Washington is absolutely zero on the American public," she said. "They eat their steaks and beef they way they always have. They're ill-informed or misinformed or they just don't give a crap."

Patrick said prior to Charlene's symptoms, he and his daughter "were like best friends."

The first signs something was going wrong occurred when she became depressed shortly after finishing her degree at the University of Miami in 2001. Her symptoms did not improve and she was involved in an automobile collision in December and totaled her car.

"That's when I realized something was definitely wrong here," Patrick said.

Later, he noticed her right hand trembled at times. Her mother took her to the United Kingdom in February 2002 where he condition worsened and ultimately was diagnosed as vCJD by a doctor there.

"The whole family was devastated," Patrick said. Charlene was bright, bubbly and one of the most gregarious members of the family, he said. "Everybody was so depressed -- you could hear a pin drop in the house."

Several treatments were tried on Charlene, but nothing has been shown to have much effect delaying the irreversible brain damage the disease causes. At the end, the family took her to a hyperbaric center in Fort Lauderdale three times per week, where she spent time in an oxygen-rich environment. Patrick said that seemed to help keep her stable but she was still unable to talk, swallow or move voluntarily.

"The family hopes this serves as a wake up call to America to learn from the mistakes of the (U.K.'s experience)," Sharon said.

"Take whatever precautions we need to take," including testing 100 percent of cows for this disease, she said.

The USDA launched an expanded surveillance program June 1, with the proposed aim of testing more than 200,000 cows. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and other USDA officials have said they would not be surprised to find additional infected cows as more animals are tested.

The U.S. meat industry has insisted the beef supply is safe, but consumer groups have called for more testing, saying that even under the expanded program the United States will be testing less than 1 percent of its herd.

Patrick said he "holds the U.K. government totally responsible for my daughter's predicament," because they allowed the feeding of cattle tissue back to cattle, which is thought to have helped propagate the disease among U.K. herds in the 1980s. More than 150 people worldwide have developed vCJD, but most have been U.K. citizens under the age of 55, including one girl who first developed symptoms at age 12.

"It's an immense tragedy, really, to see somebody as young and ambitious and intelligent as Charlene was develop this disease," Sharon said. "To see her life suddenly taken away from her, it's a sin."

It is a tremendous loss to the family, too, she said. "Her father will never walk her down the aisle or see grandchildren from that child."

Sharon noted she and other members of the family lived in London at the height of the British mad cow epidemic and are concerned they, too, might have contracted the disease.

"We don't know if we're infected -- we don't know at all," she said. "It's possible we could've eaten the exact contaminated thing that Charlene ate."

A recent study in the Journal of Pathology indicated as many as 3,800 people in Britain could be infected but not yet have symptoms.