4 dead in NY from brain disease.

www.ajc.com...

"New York state health officials are investigating an unusual cluster of deaths in an upstate New York county that have all been caused by the same rare brain disease, they said Wednesday.

In the past three months, four people in Ulster County have died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a neurological disorder that afflicts only one in a million people a year worldwide.

There is no cure for the illness and it is invariably fatal, eating away at the brain and causing symptoms that include behavioral changes, visual disturbances, involuntary movements, blindness, weakness of the extremities and a coma.

The disease gained widespread public attention in recent years because it can, in some cases, be caused by exposure to mad cow disease."
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More story at top link.

Not that I 100% beleive in what he said, but didn't John Titor say that this particular type of disease would become more prevolent?

What do you people think of eating beef? Not really looking for the vegetarian reply on that, but does anyone worry about CJD/Mad Cow?

Kind of scarey if you ask me.. definatly something worth paying attention to.

Well,

I don't have much confidence in the Time Traveler. And the symptoms fit what I have which is Lyme's Disease but it is not fatal in a year. It is slower.
I do find it spooky that the odds are greatly reduced from 1/1,000,000 to 1/44,000 in one county in the Catskills.
Wonder what kind of research facilities are around there and if any are biological. At any rate I can not imagine there not being a connection.



www.ninds.nih.gov...

TUT

Both patients had back surgery at the same hospital:

"Tobey's and Staccio's families have been in touch in recent
days and have tried to find anything that they might have had
in common. All they have found, so far, was that both had back
surgery at Kingston Hospital � Tobey in 1995 and Staccio in 1998."

Here's a few more cases, something is just not right.
Maybe we should watch what we eat?

www.rense.com...

The article didn't say that these deaths were caused by variant Creutzfeld-Jacobs Disease, which is the form that is caused by eating Mad Cows, so this wouldn't have any connection to John Titor's predictions. They had just plain old CJD, for which there is no known cause--or at least a cause that has been discovered yet.

However, it has been contracted using contaminated surgical tools during surgery that affects the brain or spinal column, as was the case with the woman who died in Atlanta earlier this year. CJD (and vCJD) takes years to develop and can only be detected after the patient has died via autopsy, so there is no way of knowing if one is infected.

The fact that the two patients had surgery in the same hospital would only be relevant if they both had neurological surgery, the hospital had a history of not sterilizing its tools because the surgeries were 3 years apart, and there were two other patients that had CJD that were operated on immediately prior to both of these patients that would cause the tools to be contaminated. It seems to be a stretch.

Kingston is a very small town, so the fact that they both went to the local hospital isn't a major coincidence and I would probably rule it out. I would say that there might be an environmental answer, which might actually provide some answers as to the cause of CJD.

Oh my...this part of Titors story has me the most concerned. I'm not trying to prove or disprove what Titor said, but nevertheless, this is something that should be carefully watched. If some estimates including Titor's, are correct, then all the people that will die from this disease already have it...meaning that we all may be afflicted with it and not even know. Scary, very scary indeed!

All I can say is that if you see more and more people dying from it, and they are spread out cases over the world (US or World), then you can be concerned. As it stands, I wouldn't worry too much, but definitely something to watch.

Normally I would not believe something like the Titor story, but I'm somewhat torn on it since much of what he said appears to be taking form.

Originally posted by LL1
Both patients had back surgery at the same hospital:

"Tobey's and Staccio's families have been in touch in recent
days and have tried to find anything that they might have had
in common. All they have found, so far, was that both had back
surgery at Kingston Hospital � Tobey in 1995 and Staccio in 1998."

It is my understanding that once instuments are contaminated with any type of these wasting diseases, that it is almost impossible to guarantee decontamination. That may expalin this part of the report from the Rense site link provided above:

STACCIO died in Benedictine Hospital's hospice facility on Aug. 28, a few days after she was brought back from Albany. Genther said doctors told him that, because she died from CJD, his daughter could not be cremated or embalmed. She was buried at St. Mary's Cemetery in Kingston on Aug. 30.

So it would seem that if one person who was infected (without knowing yet) had it and underwent surgery, the instruments could possibly infect subsequent patients. What either doesn't make sense to me, or is most disturbing, is that the two patients who had back surgery at the same hopsital as a link had their surgeries 3 years apart.

It will be interesting to see if any further cases come to light.

"almost impossible to guarantee decontamination", this is
just GREAT!!!
Always something!

See Kingston is north from Westchester County, NY where I am.
Then the New Jersey cases, no known cause or cure you guys say...
Just GREAT!!!

What about the DDS instrutments?????
Same thing right Relentless??? Impossible to guarantee
decontamination?

Originally posted by LL1

What about the DDS instrutments?????
Same thing right Relentless??? Impossible to guarantee
decontamination?

Not sure about this LL1 but I do believe the prions are confined to the brain and spinal tissues. But then I guess I would understand not cremating the body, however what breach would there be of these tissues during an embalming? I am not overly familiar with that procedure.

As for your concerns, I am from Putnam County (half way between you and Kingston for those not familiar), having only left 3 years ago and I am very disturbed about this story, since it can take years to develop.

After all I've read about this in the past though, I am more concerned about the food supply than cross contamination through medical procedures.

As for the fact that is was not identified as variant CJD as oppossed to CJD, I personally am not comforted by that, since admitting vCJD would start a panic (as if this isn't bad enough).

I Google searched CJD, and there is nothing too much, other than
"no cause, no cure" and organizations.

What do you mean "concerned about the food supply"? Why??
Do you mean if people with CJD, unknowingly, and are working in
the food industry that can be another form/way of contamination?

And as for embalming vs cremation vs burial, human parts/fluids
still have to be disposed of. Would or could the reservoirs in the
area be affected?

Here's a link to a previous thread about vCJD covering a wide range of topics on it. Most of the research and links are from the UK, where I guess since they can't deny the problem, there is a bit more information about it.

It answers some of the questions I didn't answer, but I don't recommend reading it unless you think you can handle the possibilities about it. (Sorry, I don't know how else to say it.)

www.abovetopsecret.com...

This is an interesting story along the same lines of which I was previously unaware.

www.hpj.com...

Michael Greger, MD wonders if thousands of Americans may be dying of "Mad Cow" disease. This may be a dubious source, but I'll let the reader determine that. I CC&P; you decide.

Published on Wednesday, January 7, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Could Mad Cow Disease Already be Killing Thousands of Americans Every Year?
by Michael Greger, M.D.

October 2001, 34-year-old Washington State native Peter Putnam started losing his mind. One month he was delivering a keynote business address, the next he couldn't form a complete sentence. Once athletic, soon he couldn't walk. Then he couldn't eat. After a brain biopsy showed it was Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, his doctor could no longer offer any hope. "Just take him home and love him," the doctor counseled his family.[1,2,3] Peter's tragic death, October 2002, may have been caused by Mad Cow disease.

Seven years earlier and 5000 miles away, Stephen Churchill was the first in England to die. His first symptoms of depression and dizziness gave way to a living nightmare of terrifying hallucinations; he was dead in 12 months at age 19.[4] Next was Peter Hall, 20, who showed the first signs of depression around Christmas, 1994. By the next Christmas, he couldn't walk, talk, or do anything for himself.[5] Then it was Anna's turn, then Michelle's. Michelle Bowen, age 29, died in a coma three weeks after giving birth to her son via emergency cesarean section. Then it was Alison's turn. These were the first five named victims of Britain's Mad Cow epidemic. They died from what the British Secretary of Health called the worst form of death imaginable, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a relentlessly progressive and invariably fatal human dementia.[6] The announcement of their deaths, released on March 20, 1996 (ironically, Meatout Day[7]), reversed the British government's decade-old stance that British beef was safe to eat.[8]

It is now considered an "incontestable fact" that these human deaths in Britain were caused by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), or Mad Cow disease.[9] Bovine means "cow or cattle," spongiform means "sponge-like," and encephalopathy means "brain disease." Mad Cow disease is caused by unconventional pathogens called prions--literally infectious proteins--which, because of their unique structure, are practically invulnerable, surviving even incineration[10] at temperatures hot enough to melt lead.[11] The leading theory as to how cows got Mad Cow disease in the first place is by eating diseased sheep infected with a sheep spongiform encephalopathy called scrapie.[12]
www.commondreams.org...