October 30, 2000

The British government said the number of people who die from the human variant of "mad cow" disease could grow, REUTERS reports. The news service quotes Agriculture Secretary Nick Brown as denying that "powerful public protection measures" were being dismantled.

A 14-year-old British girl died this weekend from new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), and a government adviser said he might revise upward his predictions of the number of people infected between 1980 and 1996. The government has announced plans to compensate victims, partly in response to a harshly critical report on the crisis released last week.