DO VACCINES CONTAIN THE “MAD COW” INFECTIOUS AGENT?
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as “mad cow disease,” is a fatal disease of the nervous system of cows that was first diagnosed in 1986. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) is a disease of the nervous system of humans that begins with serious psychiatric problems or sensory problems and is later manifested by muscle spasms, loss of coordination, and confusion. On average, death follows the first symptoms of vCJD in approximately 13 months. Consumption of food contaminated with the BSE agent (which may be a modified cell protein) has been linked to vCJD in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and France. In 1993, the FDA asked all vaccine manufacturers to eliminate bovine materials from countries affected by BSE, but recently FDA officials discovered that some vaccine manufacturers were not strictly following these recommendations. For this reason, the FDA convened a meeting of BSE and vaccine experts on July 27, 2000. After taking many factors into account (eg, the numb
