Summer is the newspapers' silly season, when even the most serious reporters tend towards the "Man bites Dog" school of journalism. "Cow eats Man" is an unusual variation on the theme, but it is no joke this week. In the latest issue of the Lancet, Alan and Nancy Colchester, at the universities of Kent and Edinburgh respectively, propose just that to explain the origin of one of the world's most perplexing diseases: bovine spongiform encephalop-athy (BSE). BSE, or mad-cow disease as it is more familiarly known, is a fatal brain disorder that swept through British cattle in the 1980s, and has appeared in almost two dozen other countries, most recently America. BSE is one of a family of so-called prion diseases, such as the human disorder Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which are the result of a naturally occurring protein changing shape in such a way as to cause neurological problems. Some prion diseases are caused by hereditary mutations in the gene encoding this protein. Others are acquired by contact with infected material. One of the most alarming examples of the latter is a new form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease called VCJD. This has affected more than 150 people in Britain, and is thought to be connected with the consumption of BSE-infected beef.
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机译：夏天是报纸的愚蠢季节，即使是最认真的记者也倾向于进入新闻界的“ Man Bites Dog”学校。 “ Cow eats Man”是该主题的不寻常变体，但本周并不开玩笑。在最新一期的《柳叶刀》杂志上，肯特大学和爱丁堡大学的艾伦和南希·科尔切斯特分别提出，以解释世界上最令人困惑的疾病之一的起源：牛海绵状脑病（BSE）。疯牛病（疯牛病）是一种致命的脑部疾病，1980年代席卷英国的牛，并已在另外两个国家（最近的美国）出现，是一种致命的脑部疾病。疯牛病是所谓的pr病毒疾病家族之一，例如人类疾病克雅氏病（Creutzfeldt-Jakob疾病），这是自然发生的蛋白质改变形状而导致神经系统问题的结果。某些病毒疾病是由编码该蛋白质的基因中的遗传突变引起的。其他人则是通过接触被感染的材料而获得的。后者的最令人震惊的例子之一是一种新型的克雅氏病（VCJD）。这影响了英国的150多人，被认为与食用BSE感染牛肉有关。
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