Scientist Finds Evidence Of Mad-Squirrel Disease

LEXINGTON, Ky. - A University of Kentucky researcher thinks there might be a medical link between squirrel-meat consumption in Kentucky, "mad-cow" disease in England and a brain-destroying illness that afflicts cannibals in New Guinea.

Dr. Joseph Berger, chairman of UK's department of neurology, stressed that he isn't suggesting people are putting themselves at risk by eating squirrel meat, or that they should stop.

But he might have another piece of a complex puzzle involving several brain-destroying illnesses that strike humans and animals, and which apparently are transmitted by a mysterious agent unlike anything else found in nature.

"At this point, I'm treating it semi-seriously," Berger said. "It's an interesting observation. But we need a lot more data."

Berger's theory grew out of his investigations of patients with a rare, fatal brain disorder called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. People with the disease lose muscle coordination and suffer dementia in middle age.

Berger said he noticed that a few victims had a history of eating squirrel meat, particularly squirrel brains. Berger found the first such patient while working in Florida before coming to UK. The patient was from Kentucky, where some rural residents eat squirrel brains scrambled with eggs.

"Later, I raised this with a friend who is a neurologist in Owensboro, and he looked at his cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease," Berger said. "He found that every single patient he saw with CJD had been squirrel-brain eaters.

"I just raise this as a possibility, that squirrel-brain consumption might lead to CJD."

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease afflicts only about one person in a million, usually striking after age 50. It develops slowly. But once symptoms appear, it destroys the brains of its victims, who lose muscle control and mental ability and die within a few months.

Scientists say Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is similar to scrapie, a disease that strikes sheep. It also resembles mad-cow disease, the bovine ailment that has decimated England's cattle industry since being diagnosed in 1986. And it resembles kuru, a fatal brain disorder that afflicts the Fore people of New Guinea, a cannibalistic tribe in which families honored their dead by cooking and eating them.