In the 1990s, Europe experienced the mad cow disease crisis, which affected a very large number of cattle. This crisis generated great fear of a potential pandemic caused by the human variant of this disease.
The human variant of mad cow disease was a form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a terrible and fatal neurodegenerative disease. At that time, the mechanism of this disease was not yet known in detail.
The article suggests that the topic of prion diseases has regained scientific interest, presenting the "cycles of science" related to this field of research. The author indicates that it was precisely this question that excited him and led him to dedicate himself to studying the topic.
