Hello Karl!
Maybe I was dreaming, but didn't you say this on Sunday May 18 1997
 KL> From the Wall Street Journal, 5/12/97
Thanks Karl for posting this very interesting article. It was also 
interesting to see the qualifications of the author, which must make one take 
seriously what he said. However, I do want (as a Brit who lives in France, 
and who _doesn't_ get panicked by such scares) to make a couple of points.
 KL> Last year the British government issued a report suggesting that bovine
 KL> spongiform encephalopathy, the technical term for mad cow disease, could
 KL> be transmissible to humans, who would then develop CJD.
That's not strictly true. Firstly, what happened was that a research 
establishment found a _hypothetical_ link between BSE and CJD, and the 
government didn't prevent the scientists from publishing the information. 
That's a little different from the allegation that the government published 
the info.
 KL> The ensuing media frenzy led to the greatest animal slaughter in
 KL> history, crippling the British beef industry
That's most definitely _not_ true.
There was a huge cull, that's true. There was huge media frenzy, that's also 
true. But what counted, and still does count, is the decision by the EU 
governments to ban exports of British beef world wide. It was in the hope of 
re-establishing exports that the British Government embarked on this mass 
slaughter. The British beef industry insofar as it is crippled, it is by two 
completely different things. 1 The lack of domestic demand - people simply 
don't trust British beef. 2. The word wide export ban - farmers can't export 
beef, so surplus production find no sales anywhere. In fact, one could argue 
that the cull has _helped_ stabilize the industry, in that every head of 
cattle slaughtered is compensated for, and the reduction of the number of 
beef cattle around has meant that there are fewer unsaleable cows about.
 KL> Commissioner for Agriculture Franz Fischler called mad cow disease
 KL> "the biggest crisis the European Union had ever had."
Of course, the fact that Mr Fischler is German, and that the Germans are the 
biggest competitors to the British beef industry within the EU has nothing to 
do with his language. The whole episode over BSE has been soured by 
incompetence in Britain, especially in 1989 when the then Secretary of State 
for Agriculture, John Gummer, made a string of dreadful decisions, which 
directly resulted in the growth of the disease to the 140,000+ cases 
discovered amongst british cattle. It has also been soured by the 
isolationism and xenophobia of many of the conservative backbenchers, who 
never missed an opportunity to insult and antagonise the Germans.
 KL> It has all been much ado about nothing.
I don't describe the appearance of a new variant of a killing disease, rare 
though it may be, for which there is neither test nor cure, as nothing. Heck, 
they don't even know how it is caught.
 KL> Based on available scientific evidence,
There isn't any. So this is at best a half truth, at worst a reassuring lie.
 KL> we can be virtually certain that mad cow disease poses no threat to
 KL> humans.
That's true, in that it is a disease of cattle, just as the virtually 
identical scrape is a disease of sheep that has been known for many years. 
However CJD _is_ a disease of humans, and that most definitely _does_ pose a 
threat to humans. They die, after going mad.
 KL> The disease, which mostly afflicts people over 50, is believed to be
 KL> caused by a prion, an infectious protein-like particle.  A similar
 KL> prion is believed to cause mad cow disease.
The best research data so far has shown prions present in all cases of CJD 
and BSE and Scrape. However, no one has demonstrated a mechanism whereby the 
existance of prions _causes_ these illnesses. It could be that prions are a 
_symptom_. No one knows. Equally, no one knows whether introducing prions 
from one species can cause the related illness in another. The problem with 
CJD is that it seems to have an extremely long "incubation" period - >5 years 
in humans and BSE hasn't been widespread for long enough for many people to 
have developed the disease even IF they can become infected.
 KL> CJD is a rare disease, affecting about one in a million people
 KL> world-wide.
So with a world wide population of >5 thousand million, that means some >5000 
people dying of a disease whose cause and vector method are unproven and for 
which there is no cure. I don't like to dismiss that suffering as "nothing". 
But if there IS a causative relationship, then I greatly fear that in the UK, 
v CJD will NOT be a rare one in a million disease in a few years time. From 
what I understand, the crunch will come in the next year or two.
 KL> dubbed v-CJD, was contracted by eating beef from cows suffering from
 KL> mad cow disease, then prevalent in British cattle.
The seriousness of the variant is that it attacked much younger people, as 
the article said. I don't recall the fine print of the article which made the 
link, but that's not quite right. They said that a link _couldn't be ruled 
out_. This was significant because ALL previous reports had said that links 
between eating beef and CJD _could_ be ruled out. The truth is that by 
decision of Mr Gummer in 1989, the only state funded UK laboratory 
researching BSE and its early detection was closed down, "as the disease 
would die out quickly, now the causes are known and rectified", so no one 
knows whether there is _any_ link.
Running out of space, continued
All the Best
Ian
--- GoldED 2.50+
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