The Leeds-based scientist Richard Lacey first proposed that Creutzfeld Jacob Disease (CJD) was caused by Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis. How bad did he think that it would be? Lacey was reported as saying that virtually a whole generation of people might die (Nature (1990) 345:648). On the basis of Lacey's predictions OneWorld reported: 'Recently, it was estimated that 34 million people could be infected by 1997.' (http://www.oneworld.org/news/reports/apr96_bse3.html)
In fact the number of confirmed cases of CJD by March 2001 was just 85, giving an annualised rate of 17. 16 were infected not by eating meat but by the National Health Service treatment for growth hormone deficiency, before it was withdrawn.
This makes dying from CJD in Britain about as likely as being struck by lightning in the USA (The National Weather Service publication Storm Data recorded 3,239 deaths from lightning strikes between 1959 and 1994, or 95 deaths per year. The UK population at 60 million is about one fifth of the US, I think).
Much more striking killers in the UK include deaths from clothes catching fire, 80 per year, or DIY accidents, 70 per year. Road accidents kill 3,421.
Assuming that Yoshie's statistics of UK vegetarianism pre-BSE are correct, 94.6 per cent of Britons were meat eaters. And given the government's ten-year refusal to take preventative measures against the spread of BSE, leading to infections throughout British beef herds, the estimate of 34 million deaths would be entirely plausible ...if BSE was the source of CJD.
But since most Britons probably did consume BSE infected beef, and the current rate of infection for CJD is less than one in 3 million, then it seems probable that BSE is not the source of CJD.
-- James Heartfield