[Junior]

This is the "laughing sickness" that used to affect South Seas cannibals. I thought the only way you could catch it was by ingesting the brains of an infected person.

[clamboat]

This is the "laughing sickness" that used to affect South Seas cannibals. I thought the only way you could catch it was by ingesting the brains of an infected person.

While CJD shares many of the same symptoms, it's not the same disease. Thee are apparently several diseases of this form. The one you are referring to is also known as Kuru, and was fairly common in New Guinea before cannibalism was wiped out. CJD and BSE, or 'Mad Cow Disease', are other diseases that affect humans, but there is evidence that they are in fact different diseases. Richard Rhodes wrote a winderful and very accessible book on the subject just a few years ago.

[jocon307]

"I thought the only way you could catch it was by ingesting the brains of an infected person."

Very, very rarely (see the odds noted in the article) it just spontaneously occurs. I read a very good (scary) article in the New Yorker some years ago, detailing all the various kinds of this disease. It was during the outbreak of mad-cow disease in people in the UK. The writer began by telling the story of an elderly woman in NYC, a very sophisticated, well heeled woman, who started having all sorts of little lapses. She finally went to a doctor and said "Something is wrong with me, what is it?" Unfortunately it was Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

But, it is true that eating brains is not a good idea.