Webmaster: the next generation
17 Apr 01 announcement. Mad cow news and policy has moved hereThe fifth anniversary of nvCJD on 20 Mar 2001 also marked the fifth year of coverage by this web site of spongiform encephalopathies. It seems that another 5 years could go by without answers to many questions surrounding prion diseases. With 35 labs focused on much needed commercial diagnostics, the coming years will be much more clinical in focus, even as prion fundamental research continues to stagnate.
Fortunately, Michael Greger, MD, has graciously agreed to carry forward TSE news, policy, commentary, education, interviews, diagnostics, and therapy side at a new location. We are very fortunate to have someone of Dr. Greger's caliber -- conservative yet compassionate, conventionally trained in modern medicine but with broad interests in public health, food safety, and preventative medicine. Dr. Greger has followed BSE closely for over 5 years, writing an important early 1996 white paper on TSEs, later Crohn disease (1,2), and just recently research on human health risks of foot-and-mouth disease.
No, the new mad cow site won't be "the same". It will evolve new directions and independent content aunder the direction of the interests and assessments of Dr. Greger, as appropriate to unforseeable developments in TSEs. A strong news archive has already emerged at the new site. The truth is out there: it needs to be put on the web, with the wheat from chaff sorted out the same as before.
The old news and prion science archives will remain at their current locations, as will special collections such as CWD 1,2,3,4 and Zoo TSE 1,2,3,4. The 8,000-odd articles in the archives cover the April 1996-April 2001 era, and like the BSE Inquiry, serve as an important reservoir of historical documents.
The current webmaster has moved on to broader research opportunities with the human genome project. This allows for continuing coverage of developments in prion-doppel molecular biology but only within a much larger overall genomics envelope. Widely used resources such as the prion/doppel gene mutation databases (1,2,3,4) and the curated prion/doppel sequence database will be kept current. However the new site will cover many additional genetic diseases, the nutriome, and tools, techniques, and examples relevent to annotation of the whole human genome.