New Orleans Patients Exposed to Rare Brain Disease. Sterilization of surgical instruments may not have prevented the transmission of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease [an incurable “slow virus” or prion disease related to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or “mad cow disease”), scrapie and kuru] from a neurosurgical patient later found to have had the disease to patients subsequently operated on with the same instruments. If the exposed patients are infected, it’ll be a horrific way to die.

And, after mad cow, rotten duck.