BRITAIN'S epidemic of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), the human form of mad cow disease, is likely to be much less severe than initially feared. A new mathematical model of the epidemic, due to be published in Science, predicts that there are unlikely to be more than a few thousand deaths in total. "Our model suggests the epidemic may peak in the next few years," says Simon Cousens at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. vCJD deaths so far are compatible with infections of up to several million people, he says. But if numbers are at the high end, the model predicts that the average incubation period is longer than the human lifespan, so most infected individuals never develop the disease.
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