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Coroners urged to help track mad cow disease
The mother of a man who died of a human strain of mad cow disease has today called on coroners to ask for full screenings of dead people to track the spread of the disease.
Christine Lord, whose 24-year-old son Andy died of vCJD in December 2007, has echoed scientists’ calls for checks during post-mortem examinations, which could help find out how many people in the population have the infection without knowing it.
Mrs Lord, from Southsea, said: ‘I’m looking for coroners to do their duty to face a ticking health time bomb.’
Her plea comes after scientists advising the government said systematic testing for vCJD in dead people was needed to establish how many more people were likely to get the disease and whether current measures to protect the spread of infection through blood transfusion and surgery were sufficient. But coroners say such tests could undermine their neutrality.
vCJD arose in the 1980s as a result of eating beef from cattle infected with BSE.
Since then, 164 people have died of the disease. However scientists still do not know how many people could be carrying the disease without symptoms.
Andy showed no symptoms until the end of 2006 and was initially told he was depressed.
By time the disease was detected in July 2007 he was unable to walk properly, had memory problems and struggled to carry out simple tasks.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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