Dashed hopes

A patient with vCJD who showed “remarkable” improvement after a controversial
drug treatment has died after reportedly suffering liver damage. Rachel Forber
was diagnosed with the human form of mad cow disease in June. Two months later
she began a course of chlorpromazine, an antipsychotic, and quinacrine, which is
normally used against malaria. Laboratory tests suggested that both drugs can
block the formation of prions, which cause vCJD. “It’s terrible for hope to be
given and then snatched away like that. We’re right back where we started with
no cure,” says Francis Hall of Britain’s Human BSE Foundation. But authorities…