Cluster fluster

WHEN variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (VCJD) was first identified in Britain as the human form of “mad-cow disease”, there was an understandable panic. Some scientists went so far as to predict an epidemic of this ghastly degenerative brain disease that would eventually kill hundreds of thousands of people. Last year, the panic subsided as the figures showed the number of people succumbing to VCJD falling. But recent figures released by SEAC, the government's advisory body on such matters, show a sharp rise in the number of deaths in the first half of this year (see chart), and experts reckon that the rise in the number of victims is now “statistically significant”.