Hospital exposes patients to fatal brain disease

Someone needs to relate this story to the Virginia Foxxes and Richard Shelbys who insist the American health care system is perfect.

A hospital in Wisconsin may have carelessly exposed 53 patients to a rare but fatal brain disease by using contaminated surgical instruments.

The illness - Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease - is incurable and always deadly. One variant of it is of course the feared mad cow disease.

Did the hospital use the same instruments on 53 patients in a row without sterilizing them? I thought sterilization was one of the most basic steps of modern medicine. If sterilization is ineffective for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, why did it keep using these instruments at all?

Until now, there have reportedly been only 2 instances in the entire history of the world (and none since before 1976) of a person being infected with this illness with contaminated surgical instruments.

Smooth move, American health care system.

(Source: http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=10780003)