FATHER’S FEARS OF MAD COW TIMEBOMB
I could be incubating it, Margaret could be incubating it and you could be incubating it ..We just don’t know
Scientists expect more deaths from infected beef
Many more people could die from mad cow disease, experts have warned.
Incubation periods of more than 50 years in patients with a certain gene type mean scientists are expecting a second wave of the deadly disease to hit Britain.
Experts make dire warnings about further tragedies in a new BBC documentary.
Tommy Goodwin, 58, whose son Grant, 30, died of the disease in 2009, said: “There is a second wave just round the corner of this illness and the people who are incubating this haven’t even got a clue that they are incubating it.
“I could be incubat i ng it . Grant ’ s mum Margaret could be incubat i ng it . You could be incubating it. We don’t know. You will never know until something happens.”
Taxi driver Tommy, of Hamilton, added: “It scares me immensely.
Richard Knight, professor of neurology at the CJD Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh, said: “There is still so much uncertainty about this disease and one of the things that is uncertain is how many people are silently infected.
“We are simply not sure but every prediction that we have suggests there are going to be further cases.”
Until 2009, all 176 victims of the human form of the illness, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, had the same MM genetic make up.
But in 2009 – 14 years after the first human death – Grant became the first person in the world with the gene type MV to die of vCJD.
A 36-year-old Briton with the MV mix became the second in 2014.
Research shows it can take more than 50 years for the disease to develop in people with an MV mix, so scientists fear we could be on the cusp of a second wave of deaths.
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy – known as mad cow disease – was f irst detected in Britain in the late 80s.
Millions of cattle were cul led, with almost 1000 new cases being reported every week as the epidemic reached its peak in 1993. An inquiry concluded BSE was caused by cattle being fed the remains of other cattle.
A ban on the use of high-risk offal for human consumption was introduced in 1989.
But the following year, the then agriculture minister John Gummer claimed beef was “completely safe”.
Within f ive years, vCJD had claimed its first victim – Stephen Churchill, 19, from Wiltshire, who died after eating infected meat.
Mad Cow Disease: The Great British Beef Scandal will be shown on BBC2 on Thursday, July 11.