Tom Shanahan Case Quotations

Generally, 85 percent of the tests come back as the sporadic, or naturally occurring form, 14 percent come back as the familial form that is passed down through generations and less than 1 percent come back as the variant form. There's never been a variant case acquired in the United States.

There are a lot of different diseases that look like CJD and it is so rare many doctors may never even see it in their years of practice. We don't have a lot of experience with it, so we're asking the CDC to review the cases where autopsies were not done to give us an expert opinion on whether they were likely CJD cases.