Mad cow disease: the great British beef scandal. The story of Britain's biggest food scandal ever. Mad cow disease has killed people. It is an epidemic created by greed. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease or mad cow disease. Chronic wasting disease, a communicable neurological disease in deer and elk. Researchers have found that this protein may also play an important role in Alzheimer's disease, it is correlated with shrinkage of the hippocampus. A zoonotic disease is a disease or infection that can be transmitted naturally from vertebrate animals to humans or from humans to vertebrates. animals. Additionally, human pathogens are of zoonotic origin. Mad cow disease, also known as BSE bovine spongiform encephalopathy. In humans, known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob, What is mad cow disease, About: Also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE is a degenerative, transmissible infection , slowly progressive and fatal which affects the central nervous system of adult cattle. Causes: BSE is caused by a protein called a prion that is normally found on the surface of cells, the normal prion protein changes. Mad cow disease or bovine spongiform encephalopathy BSE is a disease that destroys the brain and nervous tissues in cattle. It first appeared in Britain in the 1970s and has spread to some areas.