UK government responds to variant-CJD news and waiting lists.

Discusses how prion protein (PrP), the infectious protein responsible for variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), was reported to have been detected in the appendix removed from a man eight months before he developed symptoms of CJD; Response for the Health Department in London, England; Comments by Sir Kenneth Calman; Plans to test appendixes and tonsils held in hospital laboratory tissue banks for infection; Hospital waiting lists in the United Kingdom.