British beef blues

Curious cause

Down deer, ill elk

Can't happen here?

Laughing death in New Guinea

Identifying disease agents

Menacing microbes

Glossary

The Why Files guide to mad-cow jargon
Scientists crave acronyms and jargon in general. Here's what you gotta know to understand the mad cow situation.

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy: BSE. Mad cow disease.

Chronic wasting disease: A TSE found in some deer and elk in Colorado and Wyoming.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: CJD. A fatal, human brain illness with genetic or unknown causes, appears in one person in a million per year.

Kuru: A human TSE found in New Guinea and transmitted when people handled and ate the brains of their dead relatives.

Scrapie: A TSE that has afflicted sheep since the 1700s or before. Not known to be transmitted to humans.

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy: TSE. The group of infectious brain diseases caused by prions.

Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: vCJD. The "human" version of mad cow disease, similar to CJD but appears in younger people.