A frightening article from http://www.newscientist.com...
Here is an excerpt:
".......
Gene data reveals that further waves of human deaths due to mad cow disease
are likely
Further waves of deaths from the human form of mad cow disease look
increasingly inevitable, following new genetic studies in mice.
These show that mice can vary enormously in the time they take to develop an
equivalent disease, depending on the combination of genes they have
inherited.
The studies undermine hopes that the 100 or so victims to date of variant
Creutzfeld Jakob Disease (vCJD) only succumbed to the disease because of
freak variations in one key gene.
The new work suggests the time it takes to develop the disease might depend
on a combination of several genes, not just one. This means that far greater
numbers of us could be "incubating" the disease, but have yet to show
symptoms.
"It's not a question of whether you get the disease, but when," says John
Collinge, the neurogeneticist at University College London who led the
research. He adds that, if we are fortunate, the incubation times may be
longer than natural lifespans for many people.
"We would predict that some humans would have very long incubation periods
and others would have short ones depending on the cocktail of gene variants
they've got," he says.
......."
So, does anyone know if the prion disease will continue to ravage the brain
even when submerged in LN2 (or at the proposed, somewhat warmer storage
conditions)?
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