SCIENCE

SCIENCE: "Citing circumstantial evidence, two British researchers have raised the provocative possibility that mad cow disease arose in English herds after they were given imported feed that contained remains of humans who had died of the closely related Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

The infection may have come from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh, they wrote in last week's issue of the journal the Lancet, because scavenging for human bones and remains is widespread in those nations. The researchers said there have been documented reports that those remains have been included in exported material used for animal feed and fertilizer that was used widely in England in the 1960s."