When I opened the paper yesterday, I was dismayed to see your article on mad cow disease, vegetarianism and the possible link to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (“What’s the beef with meat?” March 27). I was dismayed not because the topic doesn’t deserve coverage, but because of the trite and insensitive illustration that accompanied it, depicting a cow in a straight jacket being ridiculed by other cows.
Four years ago, my grandmother was diagnosed with sporadic (also known as classic) Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. One day she was a loving, vibrant mother of seven and grandmother of eleven. In less than a month, before our own eyes, she had become distant and confused. She was unable to remember what she had done an hour earlier, and she was losing her balance. She also suffered from violent mood swings. Eventually, she could no longer walk or care for herself and didn’t recognize her own husband to whom she had been married for over 40 years.
At the time, very little was known about Creutzfeldt-Jakob; the doctors she went to see didn’t even know what it was. She and my family were told that she was suffering from depression or that it was “all in her head.” But it was not all in her head, nor was she suffering from mental illness.
After visiting Dartmouth Hospital in New Hampshire, we learned what the actual problem was. My grandmother was suffering from a very serious, very rare illness that she probably contracted on a trip to England and Ireland more than 10 years earlier. Less than three months later, she passed away, leaving behind a large group of stunned and devastated family and friends.
Creutzfeldt-Jacob is a debilitating killer that still has no cure. It affects about one in a million people, mostly those between the ages of 50 and 70. The victims and their family members deserve sympathy and respect for what they have gone through because of this horrible illness, not to have their suffering belittled, albeit unknowingly, by insensitivity.
While I appreciate the attempt by The Daily Free Press to inform its readers about the possible link between mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, please take more care with illustrations.
They may seem humorous and aesthetically pleasing to you (or they may just be there to take up space), but the illustration for that story is truly disrespectful to the memory of my grandmother and the other victims of this disease and their families.
Erin Lynch SED ’02
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