AP- Frankfort, Ky Sept 8, 1997.
Squirrel brains are a lip-smacking memory for Janet Norris Gates. They were the choicest morsels of the game her father once hunted in Tennessee. ``In our family, we saw it as a prized piece of meat, and if he shared it with you, you were pretty happy. Not that he was stingy,'' said Mrs. Gates, an oral historian in Frankfort, ``but there's just not much of a squirrel brain.''
Now, some people might want to think twice about eating squirrel brains, a backwoods Southern delicacy. Two Kentucky doctors last month reported a possible link between eating squirrel brains and the rare and deadly human variety of mad-cow disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
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Dr. Eric Weisman, a behavioral neurologist who practices in rural western Kentucky, reported in the distinguished British medical journal
The Lancet that he has treated 11 people for Creutzfeldt-Jakob in four years, and all had eaten squirrel brains at some time. Six of the victims, ranging in age from 56 to 78, have died.
kinda gives a new meaning to "squirrel brained. " eh?
Link.