Parkes admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility as he was diagnosed with depression after the onset of a muscle-wasting disease three years before the attack.

BBC: Police at Jubilee Park - archive image

Wyeth, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, created a myostatin-blocking drug and put it into clinical trials for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a muscle-wasting disease that kills hundreds of men each year before they reach their mid-thirties.

FORBES: Bioengineering The Perfect Athlete

The European Union imposed a worldwide embargo on British beef exports in 1996 following evidence that infected meat caused a fatal brain-wasting disease in humans.

BBC: Renewed British mad cow disease warning

Mr Cato suffers from motor-neurone disease, a muscle-wasting condition that will leave him unable to breathe.

ECONOMIST: Assisted suicide

There were 113 cases of definite or probable vCJD in the UK between 1996, when doctors distinguished it as a new form of the rare brain-wasting disease CJD, and 3 December.

BBC: Clutch of vCJD cases unrelated