ABSTRACT
In the mid-1980s, a brand new disease suddenly, and without warning, appeared among herds of British cattle.1 The fatal malady proved to be a spongiform encephalopathy (SE) disease, so-called because of the sponge-like holes it causes in its victims’ brains. Even as the disease (which most reports claimed had never before been seen among cattle) was being named bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and nicknamed mad cow disease (MCD), inferences were being made, far-reaching projections postulated, and alarms sounded in scientific circles around the world.
