It is not known whether bovine spongiform variably encephalopathy (BSE), a disease of cattle invariably deadly to the...

shunhe on January 6, 2021

Hi @Jordan-Ceasar,

Thanks for the question! So we’re being asked here for something that best completes the argument. We’re told that we don’t know if BSE can be transmitted at all stages directly. If it can be, there’s a bunch of infected cattle. And we can’t tell which ones they are. So if there’s direct transmission, we can’t eradicate the disease by something we’re supposed to fill in.

So we’re looking for ways we CANNOT eradicate the disease. (A) says that we can’t eradicate it by taking diseased animals once they show symptoms. This seems correct, since by doing this, we wouldn’t be able to remove the asymptomatic cattle, and we know that the disease would be transmittable at the asymptomatic stage (sound like any diseases you know . . . ?).

(B), on the other hand, says that we can’t eradicate it by making a drug that kills the agent that causes BSE and then treating all the cattle that might have it. Well, that seems like it’d be a pretty good way to get rid of BSE if we could pull it off. So since it would work, it can’t be the answer to this question.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.