Mad Cow Disease Attacks Spontaneously

Libby Quaid of the Associate Press writes today about two new cases of Mad cow diseases in Texas and Alabam. The title of this blog has been purposefully hyped to indicate just how scary this could be, afterall isn't that the purpose of news today? Write about the doom and gloom and the fear that should be gripping all of us?

I found one article from chron.com, you know chron.com, well don't you, if you know gridlock-on-rye you must surely know chron.com.

Well maybe not. Almost anyone can throw together a website these days that looks as good as most of the main stream news sources. I'm not knocking chron.com, but I'd never heard of them until they showed up in Google news today.

For the less than main stream news organizations, papers, channels, and blogs its all about getting on Google News, or maybe Slashdot or for the technophiles maybe even digg.com. What's the best way to get listed and exposed such that you'll bring even more traffic to your site?

Why throw out a great headline sure to capture people's attention. If possible say something that no one else is saying such that you'll stick out on Google.

So be wary, be warned and understand what you are reading. There are many people motivated to hype the news.

Here's excerpts from the Chron.com article below:

Chron.com Mad cow cases in Texas, Alabama called mysterious
"WASHINGTON - Two cases of mad cow disease in Texas and Alabama seem to have resulted from a mysterious strain that could appear spontaneously in cattle, researchers say.
. . .

Continued . . . Mad cow disease is not transmitted from cow to cow like a cold or the flu. It is thought to spread through feed, when cows eat the contaminated tissue of other cattle.

Humans can get a related disease, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, in similar fashion - by eating meat contaminated with BSE. Mad cow in humans typically afflicts younger people; the average age at death is 28.

A more common form of CJD - not linked to mad cow - can happen spontaneously and is reported in nearly 300 people in the U.S. each year. This form infects mostly older people; the average age at death is 68.

Some scientists are raising the possibility that the atypical strain also might happen spontaneously in cattle. The Texas and Alabama cows were older animals, as were some of the other animals in Europe with seemingly atypical cases."