Mad Cow Claims Life of APA
June 25, 2004
A 25-year-old woman with the human variant of mad cow disease has died, the first such death in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday, June 21.
Charlene Singh died the day before at her father’s Fort Lauderdale, Fla., home.
She was diagnosed two years ago with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a brain-wasting illness known as mad cow disease.
“I felt her hands; they were cold but her body was warm,” her father, Patrick Singh, told The Miami Herald for its June 22 edition. “I would not believe it. I put my ear to her chest to hear her heart. I just started to cry.”
No deaths related to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease have been previously reported in the United States, said Llelwyn Grant, spokesman for the CDC.
Singh and his ex-wife, Alison, said they believe their daughter ate contaminated beef sometime before 1992 in England, where the family formerly lived.
The disease has killed more than 140 people in Great Britain and at least 10 others in other parts of the world. No Americans are known to have contracted the disease in this country, although one case of disease has been reported in a cow.
Charlene Singh lived with her family in London until she was 13. After earning her business management degree at the University of Miami, she noticed the first symptoms: irritability, forgetfulness and uncharacteristic outbursts of anger.
“She asked me one day, ‘What is wrong with me?’” said her aunt Amru Ramsaran. “I didn’t know what to say to her because at that time no one was totally sure what it was.”
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