Critical Focus | Big Beef Over Mad Cow Disease
THE MICROSCOPE
2016, Volume 64:2, pp. 69–78
DOI
https://doi.org/10.59082/HXVA6068
AUTHOR
Brian J. Ford
EXCERPT
Doomsday was 20 years ago. A million people faced death in Britain, and the rest of the world was under threat. It was in March 1996 that a new disease had been officially acknowledged — a degenerative and fatal neurological condition contracted by consuming cattle. This was Mad Cow Disease. It was a scourge unlike any we had ever seen and was caused — not by viruses or bacteria — but by an unfamiliar agent: the prion.