Malaria drug used to treat mad cow cases / Results so encouraging human trials on fast track An obscure drug once widely used against malaria is showing such early promise against the brain-killing particles that cause mad cow disease that San Francisco doctors are already trying the drug on the first desperately ill patients.
Experimenting with an unproven drug in humans is usually considered unethical before clinical trials have even started. But doctors said this is no usual case: The patients have no other options, and the malaria remedy, called quinacrine, has been on the market for decades.
Disclosure of what could be the first drugs to fight the infectious particles prompted a flurry of excitement in Great Britain, where a reported 105 people have contracted Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of mad cow disease, after consuming infected beef.
Dr. Bruce Martin, a neurologist at the University of California at San Francisco, confirmed yesterday that the first two patients, both suffering from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, had been started on quinacrine in late July.
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Mad Cow Disease is present in THE UNITED STATES. Why didn't I know this? I thought it was confined to Britain. Wanna bet that the beef industry has been helping keep it quiet over here?