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Re: Mad Cow disease, BSE; Justice is served.



In article <aquilla.1179445902C@emba-news.emba.uvm.edu>
           aquilla@salus.med.uvm.edu "Tracy Aquilla" writes:

> In Article <828735794snz@daflight.demon.co.uk>, Hugh Easton
> <hugh@daflight.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >Before you rush out and buy that steak, check out the following URL:
> >    
> >    http://www.airtime.co.uk/bse/
> >
> >Personally, I prefer not to eat something which has been shown to readily
> >infect almost every species of animal exposed to it, including zoo 
> >herbivores and carnivores, pet cats, laboratory rodents and even monkeys.
> >
> >-- 
> >Hugh Easton                             <hugh@daflight.demon.co.uk>
> 
> The occasional level of ignorance on this newsgroup never ceases to amaze me.
>     Tracy
> 
Would you care to expand on that remark? 

The latest issue of New Scientist magazine (13 April) has some more 
disturbing information about mad cow disease. For years the British 
Government has been claiming that BSE was caused by the inclusion of sheep 
carcasses infected with scrapie in cattle feed. Because scrapie does not 
transmit to humans, it was claimed that BSE was unlikely to affect people 
either.

Now it appears that this theory is wrong. Since 1990, researchers in
Ames, Iowa have been deliberately infecting cows with scrapie and
looking at the results. Quoting from the New Scientist article:

   The cows became sick after 14 to 18 months. They were lethargic, had
   difficulty moving their hind legs, and died within 5 months. But these
   animals did not seem to have BSE. There were none of the behavioural
   abnormalities that led to the illness's popular name "mad cow disease".
   Postmortems underlined the difference. "The pathology in the brain did 
   not resemble BSE at all," says Mark Robinson of the Animal Disease
   Research Unit in Pullman, Washington.

The epidemic may in fact have originated with the inclusion of a single
"spontaneous" case of BSE in cattle feed in the 70s. 

   Because cattle carcasses were also rendered into animal feed, the
   agent would have been repeatedly recycled through cows, building
   up for years at levels too low to cause symptoms before emerging
   as an epidemic. If this version of events is correct, the line taken
   by ministers on the risks to human health was misguided from the
   start, says Rohwer [an expert on spongiform encephalopathies at the
   Veterans Affairs Medical Centre in Baltimore, Maryland]. "If it is
   not scrapie in cows, that blows the whole basis of the public health
   policy out of the window."

So there you have it. A disease about which very little is known in our
food, which has so far infected almost every species of mammal exposed
to it, including primates. The incubation period of this type of disease
is known to be extremely long, particularly when it is being transmitted
to a different species - in people, it could be anything up to 40 years 
before the bulk of those infected develop symptoms (if we are susceptible 
to infection). Maybe humans will turn out to be particularly resistant, 
but that is not a chance that I am prepared to take.

-- 
Hugh Easton                             <hugh@daflight.demon.co.uk>



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