080304 Former Pork Plant Worker Gets Mysterious Illness

A former Nebraska pork plant worker has been diagnosed with a mysterious nerve illness that has struck slaughterhouse workers in Minnesota and Indiana.

An investigator for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the man is no longer working at the plant but was diagnosed with the condition the CDC is calling progressive inflammatory neuropathy.

A Nebraska health department official says four or five other cases are being examined, but she says those aren't confirmed cases.

One of the CDC theories about the cause is that contact with pig brain tissue triggers an autoimmune reaction -- the body's immune system goes out of control and attacks its own tissue.

The sick workers' slaughterhouses had used the same sort of compressed-air system to remove the brains from the pig skulls.

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