Can It Happen Here?

But if BSE did first arise from a sheep disease gone spontaneously wild, something similar could happen here--and not just with sheep. U.S. officials have found that elk in Western states suffer from a prion disorder called chronic wasting disease that causes severe weight loss and listlessness. When contaminated tissue was injected into the brains of cows, they too developed the disease (although cows that merely ate elk meat did not). Last week advisers to the FDA took up the question of whether deer, closely related to elk, might pose a danger to venison eaters. "We have to be vigilant," says Linda Detwiler, coordinator of BSE surveillance for the USDA.

Meanwhile, new research suggests that to get VCJD, you may need to be genetically susceptible to the disease prion. This might mean that a genetic test could eventually identify those few individuals likely to develop the disease. If so, these folks would probably do well to become vegetarians. And the rest of us who are resistant might finally be able to stop worrying.