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Family friend of John Gummer is killed by CJD aged 23
Last updated at 00:07am on 12.10.07
Elizabeth Smith: She learned on her 21st birthday that she had vCJD
Elizabeth Smith died last week, more than two years after learning on her 21st birthday that she had new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Her father, retired vicar Roger Smith, is a friend of Mr Gummer, a former parishioner who famously attempted to allay fears about BSE in 1990 when he publicly fed a burger to his four-year-old daughter, Cordelia.
At the time, Mr Gummer said: "I can assure the public there is no cause for concern.
"The Government has taken all the advice it can from the experts. Their conclusion is that beef is perfectly safe."
University student Miss Smith quit her course days after the diagnosis in March 2005 and soon became so ill she needed round-the-clock treatment.
She was 23 when she died at her parents' home. Yesterday, they paid tribute to their "active and intelligent" daughter.
Mr Smith, of St Margaret South Elmham in Suffolk, said: "By the time she came home she had trouble swallowing and then couldn't swallow at all, so for the last two-and-a-half years she was fitted with a gastro-tube.
"After that the disease was remorseless in the way that it killed her off. She was unable to walk for the last two years of her life and couldn't speak or smile.
"Elizabeth had to be cared for 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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It's safe: John Gummer feeds his daughter Cordelia a burger
"She was more helpless for those last two years than when she was born - at least then she could move her arms and cry but by the end she couldn't even do that."
Describing her daughter's 21st birthday, Molly Smith said: "That was the worst time because we all had to cope with the fact that she was going to die.
"Elizabeth was clever, bright and intelligent. If she had been able to do her final exams she would have got a very good degree.
"She wanted to do primary school teaching and had a place on a postgraduate training course."
Miss Smith, who had a brother, Andrew, 39, passed four A-levels before going to Birmingham University in 2002 to read geography.
She first became ill in August 2004 but it was not until seven months later that she was told by doctors she had vCJD.
Mr Smith said yesterday that he was "99.9 per cent certain" that his daughter's illness had been caused by contaminated beef.
But he refused to blame Mr Gummer, saying the episode with the burger had not changed the way he viewed meat.
He added: "One of the few comforting thoughts is that almost certainly Elizabeth's degree of awareness in the last two years of her life was minimal. Some doctors would say that vCJD is far more painful to watch than suffer."
Miss Smith was the 162nd person to die from new variant CJD, which was first identified in 1996 after being linked to an outbreak of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in cattle. vCJD slowly destroys the brain, giving it a sponge-like appearance.
It is thought to be caused by the build up in the brain of an abnormal form of the naturally occurring prion protein.
Most cases have developed as a result of eating infected meat, although five victims have been vegetarians. The disease has also been transmitted by blood transfusion and infected surgical equipment.
Mr Gummer was not available for comment yesterday.
