- Swift & Company, a subsidiary of the giant Omaha-based
ConAgra Corp, very suddenly shut down its Nampa, Idaho meatpacking plant
on August 8th, laying off over 400 employees. They had been major suppliers
to Albertsons, the Boise-based 2nd largest US grocer.
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- See story at
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- Idaho Probes Sudden Deaths From Rare Brain
Disease
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- By Adam Tanner
- 8-16-5
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- TWIN FALLS, Idaho (Reuters)
- In late May Marjorie Skinner played golf well enough to place fourth
in a Memorial Day weekend golf tournament. Yet within weeks, the previously
vibrant retiree suddenly started losing her ability to speak.
-
- By the time her family buried her on Friday, she was
the fifth suspected victim in the same sparsely populated area of Idaho
of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a rare brain-wasting disease that typically
afflicts only one in a million people.
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- As word of this latest death spread on Monday, local
and federal health experts sifted through clues about an illness different
from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the human form of mad cow disease.
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- "Five (cases) in one valley is pretty serious,"
Sue Skinner, Marjorie's daughter in law, said in an interview. "It's
a grave concern in our family."
-
- The mystery has deepened in recent weeks. Only at the
end of May did local health officials see a second elderly woman die of
the incurable disease involving a malformed protein, or prion, that kills
brain cells. After that, they learned of three other suspected cases, including
a CJD death in February that was reported only last month.
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- "Is what is happening in Idaho an anomaly, a statistical
fluke? That is possible," said Ermias Belay, a top CJD expert with
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta who is helping
advise officials in Idaho. "But once it exceeds 1.5 or 2 per million,
you start asking questions."
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- "If they are all confirmed, it could be odd."
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- In a year, the United States typically sees fewer than
300 CJD cases, which mete out rapid death to the elderly, according to
the Centers for Disease Control.
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- ANY UNUSUAL HOBBIES?
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- In Twin Falls, Cheryle Becker, epidemiology manager for
Idaho's South Central District Health, is going to families with detailed
questionnaires aimed at finding the roots of a disease that could date
back 30 years.
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- She asks about past travels, unusual hobbies and dietary
habits, including of organ meats, brain and venison.
-
- "We're asking them if they've consumed elk,"
Becker said, adding that many hunt venison in this region of the country.
"We're not having many people say that they have."
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- Experts say they do not expect to find a link to eating
meat, although locals are asking if there is any connection to the human
variant of mad cow disease. "It's very frightening to the community."
said Cheryl Juntunen, director of the South Central District Health.
-
- Two confirmed U.S. cases of mad cow disease, one in a
Washington state dairy animal in 2003 and the other in a Texas beef cow
this year have further heightened concern.
-
- To date, health experts have found few parallels between
the women, all of European heritage. Four were Idaho natives, all had children,
none had experienced neurological disease.
-
- One had spent time in Britain prior to the outbreak of
mad cow disease there, officials said. Several husbands were involved in
farming, as is commonplace in a rural farmland region where locals still
talk about stuntman Evel Knievel's 1974 attempted jump over the Snake River.
-
- "There are things that lead you to believe this
is not variant CJD," Becker said, pointing to the advanced age of
the victims and faster death than in mad cow-related cases.
-
- The Centers for Disease Control estimate that spontaneous
flaws in cell proteins result in 85 percent of CJD cases. Another 5-15
percent comes from genetic inheritance, leaving just a small percentage
of other unexplained cases.
-
- Yet experts say studies of a few past clusters of CJD
cases are inconclusive; some say better records and ability to recognize
the illness could account for the Idaho mystery.
-
- "I think in the end this may be a statistical fluke,"
said Christine Hahn, chief epidemiologist for the state of Idaho. "But
there is so little known and there have been very few published reports
on these clusters."
-
- Families for three out of the five Idaho victims have
agreed to autopsies, officials say, and results from those tests may provide
essential clues in the coming weeks.
- © Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
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- http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?ty
pe=domesticNews&storyID=2005-08-15T222354Z_01_
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