assessment. This leaves the true prevalence in the United States and other countries remaining a mystery. Compounding the uncertainty, autopsies are rarely performed on atypical dementia patients (Harrison) because medical professionals fear infection (Altman). The officially reported rate of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease incidence is less than one case per million people per year (World). An informal survey of neuropathologists, however, registered a theoretical range of 2 - 21% of all dementia as actually Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (Harrison) and hundreds of thousands of Americans suffer from severe dementia every year (Brayne; United). Two other studies average about a 3% Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease rate among dementia patients (Mahendra; Wade). A preliminary 1989 University of Pennsylvania study showed that 5% of patients diagnosed with dementia were actually dying from Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (Boller). It would seem that Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is seriously underdiagnosed.
             The most common misdiagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is Alzheimer's disease (Harrison). Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease was even described as "Alzheimer's in fast forward (Wlalzek)." The symptoms and pathology of both diseases overlap. There can be spongy changes in the brain (a classic effect of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease) in Alzheimer's disease, for example, and senile plaques deposited on the brain (a classic effect of Alzheimer's disease) in Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (Brown). The causes may overlap as well; epidemiological evidence suggests that people eating meat more than four times a week for a prolonged period have a three times higher chance of suffering dementia than long-time vegetarians (Giem), although this resul
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