GEORGE ADAMS: Find the Bad Protein; Then, Fix It

Dr. Neil Cashman came up with a diagnostic kit usable by blood banks everywhere to detect VCJD, and approched George Adams to bring it to market

The implications were chilling.  Since the mid-1990s, the words mad-cow disease had turned beef eaters around the world to tofu tasters as people began to die of the human variant of the disease. Then in 2004 came another disturbing report in the medical journal the Lancet: variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (VCJD), as the illness is properly called, could be spread through blood transfusions. With no way to test for the incurable illness except in the brain samples of the dead, how to ensure the safety of the world's blood supply?

Dr. Neil Cashman thought he had the answer. The University of Toronto...

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