Deadly Feasts Ch 10 & 11

Late 1970's
- Patricia Merz collaborates with Robert Somerville on working with the EM
- Merz was able to develop and print pictures of the scrapie samples
- Merz and Somerville reported their discovery in a German Pathology journal named SAF
- Merz began working with Gajdusek and Gibbs
- Prusiner collaborated with Gajdusek and Mike Alpers in working on clinical studies for 15 kuru patients
Early 1980's
- Prusiner visits Gajdusek at Agakamttasa
- Prusiner repeats all the classic scrapie-agent challenges using enriched samples
- The American journal Science published the "Novel Proteinaceous Infectious Particles Cause Scrapie"
- Prusiner's assault on strains anger Alan Dickinson, who has also studied strains
- Dickinson and G. W. Outram proposed an alternative theory for both the viral and infectious-protein theories
- Prusiner and two of his colleagues report that they have purified a protein from scrapie-infected hamster brains
- Merz, Gajdueske, Gibbs, and several colleagues published Merz's important findings of SAF in mouse spleends
- They also reported finding SAF in kuru and CJD brains
- Prusiner closed in on the structure of PrP
- Prusiner demonstrated that PrP was at least a component of the scrapie agent
Late 1980's
- The plague that attack the Fore cannibalism in the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea is encounter in British cattle
- Electron mircroscopists are able to demonstrate the spongiform damage and the brown stars of astrogliosis
- Merz defined the new disease of cattle by designating it as "bovine spongiform encephalopathy" (BSE)
- BSE appeared in herds throughout England and Wales, conforming with 420 cases
- John Wilesmith began collecting detailed information for two hundred cases
- Gibbs, Carleton, Gajduesk, and their colleagues reported the successful oral transmission of kuru, CJD, and scrapie to spider monkeys
- Prusiner and Alpers had shown oral transmission through cannibalism in hamsters
- Wilesmith and his epidemiologists arranged three veterinarians to conduct a survey of all the rendering plants in Britain
- A committee was set up to address the epidemic and problems through government action in Britain
- Milk from cows with BSE were ordered to destroy and the government offers farmers compensation for their sick animals
- Britain confirmed 2,185 BSE cases, 1,765 cases more than before
- Southwood Commitee reported BSE cases will rise
1990's
- Britain reported 7,136 confirmed cases of BSE
- The death of a cat caused a national panic in Britain
- Richard Lacey appeared before the British Parliament's Agriculture Committee, who owned a meat-packing company that tried to discredit Lacey's testimony
- Two British dairy farmers died of CJD
- CJD appeared in fifthteen-year-old, Victoria Rimmer
- The death of an eighteen-year-old school boy revealed spongiform change and astrogoliosis
- Southwood reported 143,109 confirmed cases of BSE