A second Dutch person has died from the human variant of mad cow disease following the death of a woman last year, health authorities said on Thursday, according to Reuters. The Dutch Institute for Health and Environment (RIVM) gives no details about the victim, but Dutch television stations said he was a 16-year-old boy. A spokeswoman for the RIVM said the victim died from the brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) -- the human form of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) -- about two weeks ago. She did not explain why the RIVM had waited two weeks to confirm the death, which was reported in Dutch media on Thursday. The RIVM diagnosed the person with the human variant of mad cow in June and said at the time that the patient had most probably become infected by eating contaminated meat products. It was the second Dutch death from the human variant of mad cow disease after a 26-year-old woman died in May 2005. The disease is fatal and incurable. It is thought to be caused by eating food tainted with material from cattle with BSE, a progressive neurological disorder. More than 150 cases of vCJD have been reported around the world, mostly in Britain, but also in France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Canada and the United States. Mad cow disease first emerged in Britain in the 1980s and has forced the destruction of millions of cattle.
