Spotlight: Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease

It was in the mid-90s, partially owing to its association with ‘mad cow disease' that Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (CJD) first came to the attention of the wider UK public. Mad Cow Disease was the name given by the popular press to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), a new disease in cows that was first diagnosed in the UK in 1986. Attempts to control the spread of BSE led to the wholesale destruction of all cows known to be infected and eventually in 1990 a ban on the importation of British beef to continental Europe. Later, in 1996, the UK government revealed that BSE could also be tra...