The Change Mariner

Blood Transfusion Suspected in New Mad Cow Case

New York Times:

A new blood transfusion is suspected in a new mad cow case in Britain.

A Food and Drug Administration policy announced on Monday banning the feeding of cattle blood to calves was partly based on a new case of mad cow disease in which a Briton may have been infected through a blood transfusion, a Food and Drug Administration official said on Tuesday.

At a Senate hearing, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, questioned why the food agency had instituted the ban when, he said, scientific evidence indicated that infectious particles that are believed to cause mad cow disease, misfolded proteins called prions, had never been found in blood.

The agency official, Dr. Lester Crawford, told the committee that a new case of the human form of the disease, called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, came to light in late December in Britain. The ill person had received a blood transfusion from an infected donor, prompting concern among the authorities who are trying to determine whether the disease was transmitted through the blood, said Dr. Crawford, a deputy commissioner with the agency.

"The new case in England has caused shock waves around the globe," Dr. Crawford said. There have been no proven cases of transmission of mad cow in humans through blood transfusions.