IFT: A Conduit for Science-Based Opinion on Mad Cow Disease

The story broke like a tsunami. Abandoning partially completed stories until later, waves of journalists scrambled to learn the latest information on bovine spongiform encephalopathy after it was discovered in May that a lone head of cattle on an Alberta, Canada, ranch succumbed to mad cow disease. It was the first confirmed case of BSE in North America since the brain-wasting disease ravaged the European continent, and word of the discovery spread like wildfire among news media.

In Chicago, the …