1. Mad Cow Disease
What it means, how it is caused, the misconceptions, and its terrible effects

2. What is this thing?
By its definition, mad cow disease, which is known to doctors, scientists, and other health professionals as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is a transmissible, slowly progressive, degenerative, and fatal disease affecting the central nervous system of adult cattle. (Hence the name)
To most others, mad cow disease is characterized by the formation of vacuoles (holes) in the animal's brain, giving the brain a "spongy” appearance. As the disease progresses, the animal tremors, displays abnormal and sometimes aggressive behaviors, and then begins to lose muscle control eventually leading to death.

3. How it’s caused
Researchers believe that the infectious agent that causes mad cow disease is an abnormal version of a protein that is normally found on cell surfaces called a “prion.”
For reasons that are still unknown, this protein becomes altered and progressively destroys nervous system tissue such as the brain and spinal cord.
To the direct right
Contagious prion proteins in the brain multiply. (fuzzy purple blobs in this micrograph) that causes the BSE disease.

4. Misconceptions
There are a lot of misconceptions about mad cow disease, such as if it attacks humans, can lead to cannibalism, that it is spreadable simply by touching a cow with BSE, and even that mad cow disease, because it is incurable, cannot be stopped from infecting us all.
Although a lot of these myths were idealized during older times, with no medical theories, these three are still commonly believed today. First off, although the disease attacks the mind, it would never create an acute need for the consumption of human flesh. Next, being that BSE goes on with macromolecules, contained in the body, touching an infected animal would never lead to an infection of the disease. Finally, although BSE is so far incurable, like HIV, there are still ways to prevent contraction, such as wiping out the animals infected, or sanitizing utilities where these potentially infected animals could roam.

5. The Effects
The symptoms that BSE causes include loss of memory, unpredictable emotion, such as unexpected outbursts of mooing or groaning, severe and rapidly progressive dementia, excitable, anxious, and sometimes nervous reactions to external stimuli such as the touch of another animal, progressive unsteadiness of body and limb control, and the eventual inability to get up and move about. The disease so far has been 100% fatal.

6. Sources http://www.webmd.com/brain/mad-cow-disease-basics
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