England's blood supply is contaminated with Mad Cow diesease?!

[thewayne]

Nasty stuff. Apparently the prions that cause Bovine Spongiform Encephilitis, AKA Mad Cow Disease, are resistant to standard sterilization procedures! People have contracted CJD/BSE from having brain surgery where the instruments were previously used on patients who had BSE. Alternatives? Disposable instruments or something called radio-frequency gas plasma sterilization.

Not only can you not adequately sterilize the surgical instruments, but they currently can't detect the prions in the blood supply.

http://blog.wired.com/biotech/2006/12/blood_supply_th.html

Comments

[vaudy.livejournal.com]

Oh wow. CJD has been on the list of screening questions for blood donations here in the U.S. for at least three years now, but sometimes people lie. That's a little scary that if someone lies on their screening questions (or doesn't know they have it yet), we can't tell. I think it's still pretty uncommon here, but still.

[silveradept]

This is why the American Red Cross will put you on an indefinite deferment if you have CJD or have been in a country where you are likely to have been exposed to it. Until there's a foolproof way of eliminating the CJD/BSE, there's no way they're letting someone in who might contaminate it.

[zentraedi-shep.livejournal.com]

HOLY COW!!!

How long ago was all that BSE drama? Must be at least 6 or more years... And now they find that they cannot properly sterilize their instruments? A tad late, don't you think???

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Let's just say that if I required brain surgery, I'd take a VERY active interest in the procedure!