It's not the price but rather thepathology of progress that authorMark Walters laments in Six ModernPlagues. Weaving anecdote with theo-ry, Walters draws from his diversebackgrounds in veterinary medicineand journalism to link ecologic tam-pering to some of the most featured—if not feared—diseases of our time. In recounting the origin of bovinespongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or"mad cow disease," the authordescribes how, in compounding cattlefeed with slaughterhouse byproducts,we converted our oldest domesticatedherbivores into meat eaters. Bovinetrickery aside, Walters renders hisfrank assessment that, "violating suchevolutional boundaries can seemunnatural if not disgusting." He goeson to add a damaging link to the foodchain, leading to >100 human cases ofalways-fatal variant Creutzfeldt-Jackob disease (vCJD). Most casesoccurred in or are related to theUnited Kingdom, where, by late 2000,more than 35,000 herd of cattle wereinfected with BSE. Though the prac-tice of supplementing feed with ani-mal byproducts has, for the most part,been abandoned, Walters suggeststhat certain risks remain, as prions, thesubviral infectious agent responsiblefor mad cow and vCJD are also foundin wild game, though, to date, no onehas connected consumption of deer orelk meat with vCJD
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