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How do you get Mad Cow Disease?
Home » Diseases » Mad Cow Disease » How do you get Mad Cow Disease?To be totally accurate, you can't get Mad Cow Disease, because only cows can get it, and the fact that you're reading this indicates that you are not a cow. The disease that people are really talking about when they refer to a development of Mad Cow Disease in humans is a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). The variant is notated as vCJD.
There are some people whose bodies predispose them to contracting a disease like CJD or vCJD; they may be more at risk for what people commonly call "Mad Cow." The Creutzfeldt-Jakob actually occurs randomly anyways in about 1 out of every million people. vCJD (Mad Cow) can be passed on through prions (proteins) by tissue implants, blood transfusion, or blood products (like beef).
Unfortunately, scientists do not know how much infected beef you would have to eat to contract vCJD; several types of meat and by-products can carry the infections prions. Although processing foods in a certain way can destroy these prions, normal cooking will not do it.
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