George Z. Bush wrote:

: I don't understand why the press is making such a big to-do about the thing.
: From what I have heard, there have only been some 139 cases in human beings in
: the entire world. That's 139 out of some 3 billions......

True. On the other hand, Creuzfeldt-Jacob disease is appalling
in its nature and symptoms; a horrible death and very hard on
the family.

What makes it worse is that this is a totally preventable
event. BSE is almost a man-made disease; if people had not
been so stupid to feed cows with insufficiently treated
proteins from other animals (IIRC this decision was taken
in the 1980s, when the UK and perhaps some other countries
lowered the legal standard for heat treatment of carcases)
there would have been no BSE. And if authorities had not
taken an incredibly complacent "no harm will ever come to
you" attitude about BSE it would have been easy to eradicate,
as AFAIK there is no cow-to-cow transmission.

So every death to CJD is one to many. It is not like lightning
striking someone.

: Maybe it was just a slow news day and they needed something to
: fill the on-air minutes.

No, it is important enough. Even in economic terms: In the EU
the impact on the beef industry of the BSE cases was dramatic
and it will probably be the same in the USA. It remains to be
seen how wide-spread this is --- AFAIK controls in the US
meat industry are only sporadic, so an isolated case does not
need to remain one.

--
Emmanuel Gustin