Access
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
news feature
Nature 414, 576-577 (6 December 2001) | doi:10.1038/414576a
A wolf in sheep's clothing
Declan Butler1
Abstract
Is BSE lurking in sheep, but masked by scrapie? Reliable and fast tests that can tell the diseases apart are urgently needed, says Declan Butler.
After years of research, we're still no closer to knowing whether the epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) that ripped through British cattle herds from the mid-1980s also spread to sheep. In October, researchers were poised to reveal that they had found the tell-tale signature of the BSE agent in a sample of sheep brains dating from the early 1990s, when a last-minute government statement threw their work into confusion.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).