London - Evidence of a cluster of deaths from the human equivalent of mad cow disease has been reinforced with the revelation that the latest victim had close links with a part of Kent in southern England where the other deaths occurred.
The National Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh confirmed that Ms Susan Carey is the 21st victim of a recent strain of the degenerative disease linked to eating meat from cattle infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). In the 1980s Mrs Carey, who died five months ago aged 36, lived near Ashford, where her husband was a labourer on a farm that had a dairy and a beef herd.