Mad cow (BSE) and its human counterpart are scary simply because of the method of transfer. You can reduce a piece of meat to cinders and it will still be able to infect someone, just via the denatured proteins. No pathogen is involved -- to me, that's VERY frightening. Then again, it is possible that this disease (despite the small number of cases, its interesting) will prompt more research into stem cell research...you never know. :) - Tim