New Mad Cow Test on the Horizon?

pin_gween writes "Prions are thought to be responsible for mad cow disease and its human variant, Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. Until now, the only way to positively ID those infected was to dissect the brain. Canada.com has an AP wire reporting that researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston have 'developed a method of multiplying the number prions in a blood sample so a blood test then can detect them.' If perfected, it would make the blood supply safer; transfusions can spread the disease between people. It could also open up more blood donations for the Red Cross: in the U.S., people who have spent more than 3 months total (since 1980) in the UK or 6 months total (since 1980) in Europe are banned from donating."

Comments

canadian cows maybe great but ....

[moro_666]

but i dont like the fact that they kill hamsters to find out if the cows are ok ...

is there really no other way to make these tests than to kill innocent animals ? a hamster may be small but its still torturing and i'm ideologically against it. i wont go shout under their window with a sign in my hand but i definetly dont approve it. if we think it's normal to sacrifice one species animals for the sake of cheaper cow meat, what will keep the aliens from testing on us using our own behaviour as the excuse ?

i dont want to be used & deadly infected for finding out that an examination method is 16/18 % correct, do you ?

Re:canadian cows maybe great but ....

[Hannah E. Davis]

I suspect that the scientists wouldn't have used hamsters (or any lab animals) if they didn't have to, at least in part because procuring and maintaining lab animals ain't cheap and requires a fair bit of paper work. We don't really understand much about prions (well, we know what they are and what they can do, but we have no idea -why- they're like that, or how they work), so this makes it very difficult to just model a simulation or fiddle around with some tissue culture. This makes some animal testing necessary, unfortunately, and the best the scientists can do is try to be humane and hope that their research will be used to save human and animal lives.

Incidentally, I'm a former biology major, and one reason why I switched to computer science during second year was that I couldn't handle hurting animals, let alone taking them apart and poking at their squishy bits. I don't like using lab animals any more than you do, but I think it would do more harm than good if we just outlawed the practice.

Re:canadian cows maybe great but ....

[moro_666]

i guess you see my point, but i dont think most people do.

ofcourse most of us dont give much thought about the rats/mice/hamsters used in the tests, and sometimes the sacrificing is just necessary to save the healthy animals/humans that have survived so far.

but i for example have a cat at home, i'd rather infect the biologist that wants to experiment himself than my kitten, no matter the purpose.

i guess most people with pets couldn't even think about giving their cats/dogs/birds for some animal testings now would you.

humans are the product of evolution, the choice of nature. why are we so eager to choose by ourselves who survives next instead of letting the nature evolve new better and more resistant lifeforms ?

i guess we're just scared as hell, that over the last few decades our kind has been weakened so much that we would lose the battle. (here comes the planet of the apes ...)

I hope they don't expect a lot more donors

[wizrd_nml]

in the US, people who have spent more than 3 months total (since 1980) in the UK or 6 months total (since 1980) in Europe are banned from donating.

So with over 80% of Americans not even having a passport, is that really a problem?

cost and time

[silverkniveshotmail.]

i didn't notice the article mention once how long it would take to get results, or how much it would cost.

Re:Blood test since 2003

[A beautiful mind]

It may seem to be nitpicking, but all humans belong to only one species, therefore i would guess it would benefit the whole human race, not just only the humans living in America.

If it was just an unfortunate phrase, then i'm sorry that i'm still talking about it, i just wanted to make sure it gets corrected.

Re:Donation

[Graham Clark]

This depends on your definition of "many". Compared to the number who've died from HIV or hepatitis, it's fairly trivial. The reason for the ban, AFAICT, was that a few years ago there was less evidence about how many people were eventually likely to be infected, so it was much more plausible that it was a significant threat. It was an act of caution, which of course is a good thing.

Given the trend since, the British blood supply still looks immensely safe.

Banned

[dcw3]

I'm an American who lived in Europe for six years. From the time I returned to the US, until the ban was enacted, I was able to donate blood on a regular basis. I was surprised, when I was filling out the standard donation questioneer, to find that they had changed the rules, and I was suddenly unable to donate. Does this really make any sense at all? Are Europeans not donating blood? Has there been a single documented case of someone contracting Mad Cow through a blood donation? If so, are the risks of getting it worse than those of not having an adequate blood supply?

Re:Donation

[FidelCatsro]

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs180/en /
About 132 deaths over a 6 year period(not all are definite) , you have a far greater chance of the beef itself killing you by being stuck in your throat, slipping on a bit you spilled on the floor ,contracting nasty food poisoning or a bowel obstruction

Re:Donation

[wbtittle]

Sorry, you fail.

Pop quiz buddy. You are about to die. You need blood. You have a choice. DIE, or take the blood of a person who might, maybe, possibly, if 7,000,000,000 things went just right have a stray prion in his system, which might just might transfer to you and then 25 years from now cause you to die of nvCJD.

What do you choose. Death today, or death 25 years from now.

The policy is stupid. It kills people. The blood supply is severely strained as a result.

The definition of a rare blood type is not AB-, it is the type of blood you need when you need it and it is not there.

Less than 200 people have died of nvCJD in the world in the last 30 years.

Anyone worried about catching it and dying may as well shoot themselves right now, cause they are also worried to death about getting every other disease on the planet except for the ones that might actually kill them (like the flu).

GRRRR

Re:To be fair

[juan2074]

And, oddly enough, there is no talk of banning animal parts in feed.

Instead, we will just test for the disease, hoping to eliminate diseased cattle from the food supply.

Why try an ounce of prevention when we can spend more on the pound of cure?