Westminster Diary

DEATHS in Britain from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), the human
form of mad cow disease, have been rising by a third on average each year since
1995. Although the absolute number of cases is low
(New Scientist, 12 August, p 19),
it’s a worrying trend and by late summer the national press was
full of glum news about vCJD. I wrote to Bob Will, director of the National
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance Unit at the Western General Hospital,
Edinburgh, to see if researchers there were any closer to finding a reliable
diagnostic test capable of detecting the abnormal prion protein at…