The main goal of my research is to assess the risk of variant CJD, in continental Europe by comparison with the United Kingdom (U.K.). I did the present study in 1998 in Paris, as a PhD student at INSERM <http://www.u444.jussieu.fr>, Unit 444 “Epidémiologie et Sciences de l‘Information“, with a grant from the French Ministry of Research and some support from the French Research Programm on Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs): <http://www.inserm.fr/prions>. I am very grateful to Pr. Carleton Gajdusek, Pr Robert Will (CJDSU), Pr Alain-Jacques Valleron (INSERM U444), Dr Annick Alpérovitch (INSERM U360) and Meir Lenyado for their comments on this study. I have a post-doctoral position since Sept. 1999 in the context of the European Union shared cost project “Surveillance and Diagnosis of Ruminant TSEs “, task 3: Surveillance and modeling (FAIRJ-CT98-7021), at Bern University in Switzerland. I did similar studies on BSE data in the U.K. (Cohen CH et al. Int J Epidemiol 1999;28:526-3), Switzerland (Cohen CH et al. in revision), France (Cohen CH et al. in preparation), and Portugal.