At a glance / Aperçu
Prescient pediatrician forecast mad-cow crisis
Canadian Medical Association Journal 1996; 155: 1721
In the Sept. 1 issue of CMAJ [page 529], Drs. Chris MacKnight and Kenneth Rockwood wrote that a new variant of CreutzfeldtJakob disease (CJD) in the United Kingdom may be linked with an epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). However, Dr. Stewart Cameron points out that this association was also predicted 6 years earlier in CMAJ in a letter from Toronto pediatrician Peter Lewin (CMAJ 1990;142:928). Cameron, who completed a sabbatical at CMAJ this fall, noted that Lewin's letter warned that it would be important to monitor humans in areas affected by the rising incidence of BSE because there was potential for a similar increase in the incidence of human neurodegenerative diseases. "Although a working party in Britain has stated that it is 'most unlikely that BSE will have any implications for human health,' " Lewin wrote in 1990, "there is increasing indirect evidence that the infectious agents of scrapie, BSE and CJD are extremely similar, if not identical."
Lewin also communicated his fears to Agriculture Canada, and officials there confirm that his letters were part of a growing body of concern about the threat posed by BSE in the United Kingdom. In 1991 Canada recorded one case of BSE in an animal imported from the UK. That animal, and all British cattle imported after 1987, were either destroyed or returned to the UK. Lewin says Agriculture Canada saved Canada's beef industry with its prompt action, which at the time was heavily criticized as being too harsh.
| CMAJ December 15, 1996 (vol 155, no 12)
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