Two years ago we reported current thinking on the potential for gastrointestinal endoscopy to act as a vector for patient to patient transmission of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).¹ In that article we stressed that the advice would be updated if new evidence became available. Gastroenterologists may be aware of a recently published article in the Lancet² that describes the tissue distribution of abnormal prion protein (PrP^sc) in monkeys that have been inoculated with brain homogenate from first passage animals with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) via the oral route, which is the route by which the vast majority of patients developing vCJD will have become infected. As the prion protein responsible for vCJD …