There are many different hypothesis’ of the origins of nvCJD. According to Dr. Frederick A. Murphy, Dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine, “BSE was initially recognized in cattle in the UK in 1986” (Henahan). It has never been proven but is widely believed that BSE originally came from a 200 year old disease. “BSE is thought to have come from a similar diseas

Since nvCJD has many characteristics not seen before in any other disease, many special precautions should definitely be taken to prevent its spread.

The definitive answer as to how nvCJD works is not certain. However, there is a hypothesis which is widely believed to be true by the scientific community. It is believed that nvCJD is caused by a prion. “It was Stanley Prusiner of the University of California, San Francisco, who first discovered the nature of prions” (Henahan). Prions are nothing more than rogue or misshapen proteins. The problem is that these rogue proteins change the shape of normal proteins. According to Dr. Craig C. Freudenrich Ph.D.:

A person ingests an abnormally-shaped prion from contaminated food. The abnormally-shaped prion gets absorbed into the bloodstream and crosses into the nervous system. The abnormal prion touches a normal prion and changes the normal prion's shape into an abnormal one, thereby destroying the normal prion's original function. Both abnormal prions then contact and change the shapes of other normal prions in the nerve cell. The nerve cell tries to get rid of the abnormal prions by clumping them together in small sacs that merge with its "stomach" (lysosome). Because the nerve cells cannot digest the abnormal prions, they accumulate in the lysosomes. The lysosomes grow and engorge the nerve cell, which eventually dies. When the cell dies, the abnormal prions are released to infect other cells. Large, sponge-like holes are left where many cells die. Numerous nerve cell deaths lead to loss of brain function, and the person eventually dies. There has never been a document case of nvCJD in which it was passed from human to human” (Freudenrich).

e in sheep called scrapie”( Freudenrich). In the 1980’s cattle far

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