Mad Cow Disease
There are many diseases that we have to be concerned with, but one that is becoming increasingly common is that known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, otherwise known as mad cow disease. This fatal brain disease is considered to be a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) because of the effects it causes on the brain. ... In most cases of mad cow disease, having a cow eat feed supplemented with diseased cow parts spreads it from cow to cow. It has been found that the infectious agent that causes mad cow disease is called a prion. ... Prions that cause disease differ from those normally found in the body because they are considered to be a protein that can sometimes misfold and then cause other proteins to do the same, establishing a domino effect. ... This then leads us to how mad cow disease was first found in England during the 1990s. ... Sheep are prone to a disease called scrapie, and researchers think that the disease passed from sheep to cows through protein-enriched feed pellets that contained ground-up sheep brains.