Senators Seek Probe of Mysterious Cluster of CJD (Mad Cow-Like Disease)

US Senators Seek Probe of Possible Mad Cow Deaths
Tue Apr 6, 2004

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The two U.S. senators from New Jersey have requested
a federal investigation into whether mad cow disease caused the deaths of
more than a dozen people since the late 1980s, a spokesman said on Tuesday.
Senators Frank Lautenberg and Jon Corzine, both Democrats, asked the
Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control to probe the deaths of 13 people
who were believed to have contracted naturally occurring Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease (news - web sites) (CJD) between 1988 and 1992.

The 13 people that died either attended or worked at a race track in Cherry
Hill, New Jersey.

Since CJD occurs naturally in about one in a million people, the senators
questioned whether these cases were actually the new variant of CJD, which
is caused by eating beef products infected with mad cow disease.
In December, the United States discovered its first and only case of mad cow
disease in a dairy cow in Washington state.

"The CDC must do everything possible to determine if these 13 people, and
potentially many more, died as a result of mad cow disease," the senators
said in a joint letter to CDC.

"The potential for widespread public health impacts could be enormous," they
added.

A CDC spokeswoman said it was reviewing the letter, but it was too soon to
tell whether an investigation was necessary.

More than 130 people in Europe have died from the new variant of CJD, also
called vCJD.

A domestic case of vCJD has never been diagnosed in the United States. In
2002, a woman in Florida was found to have contracted the disease while
living in Britain, according to the CDC.

Most cases of classic CJD have no known cause.