I just read your magazine for the first time and love it: the articles are not only interesting, but provide valuable information. I must, however, take issue with Dr. Richard T. Johnson's advice on whether it was safe to eat meat because of the mad cow disease scare [ASK THE EXPERTS, Fall 2005]. Dr. Johnson, professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said the variant of mad cow disease that humans get - Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), which is fatal - has never been transmitted in the U.S. I beg to differ. Last winter my mother-in-law passed away from what was diagnosed as CJD. While I don't want to start a panic and the risk is low of contracting the disease from meat, telling people CJD is not transmitted in the United States is irresponsible.
Amanda Rinaldi
Columbia, Md