Prions: When proteins attack

Check out – Prions: When Proteins Attack on the Wired magazine site. It’s scary to think that you can actually get a disease that your immune system doesn’t even realize it has thus not even mounting a defense. variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease a.k.a. the infamous Mad Cow Disease is one of these.

A gentleman, in the VG Hospital in Halifax in 1993-94, whom I was personally an orderly for, eventually died of a ‘suspected’ case of ‘sporadic’ classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

I sat with him day after day and watched him deteriorate to a mere shell of himself prior to his passing. It was not pretty. Even though they claimed it was sporadic CJD at the time, there was also talk of his possibly becoming infected via frequent trips to Europe and the ingestion of prion ridden meat whilst there.

Health Canada claims it wasn’t until 2002 that the first ‘diagnosed’ case of variant CJD as caused possibly by an infected Bovine (cow) existed in Canada.

Who knows how long this has really been around and who may be infected?