Hello Karl!
Maybe I was dreaming, but didn't you say this on Saturday May 31 1997
 KL> Ian Hoare, citing the Rules of Acquisition to Karl Lembke, said:
Sorry to have taken so long in replying, I've only just seen your letters.
 KL>> Based on available scientific evidence,
 IH>> There isn't any. So this is at best a half truth, at worst a
 IH>> reassuring lie.
 KL>> no evidence that any of the victims had eaten such beef,
 IH>> Equally, there was no evidence they hadn't.
 IH>> whereby the existance of prions _causes_ these illnesses. It could
 IH>> be that prions are a _symptom_. No one knows. Equally, no one knows
 KL> What you're doing here looks an awful lot like argumentum ad
 KL> ignorantiam -- the fallacy of appealing to ignorance.
Hang on, hang on, although the actual mechanism of disease transmission isn't 
known - so far as we've been led to understand in Europe, there is good 
evidence that a) BSE was introduced into the bovine population through the 
inadequate sterilisation of sheep nerve tissue. b) The disease can be 
transmitted within herds - in France where all herds were slaughtered if any 
_one_ of the herd showed the symptoms, the number of cases is in the low 
hundreds, whereas in the UK, despite the slaughter of the affected cattle 
themselves _and_ the cessation of the use of prion contaminated foodstuffs in 
1989, the number of cases was in the hundreds of thousands.
 KL> You appear to be saying "there's no evidence that mad cow disease
 KL> DOESN'T cause symptoms in humans and so maybe we should worry."
No I'm not. I'm saying that following an epedemic of BSE in the UK cattle 
population, one of the symptoms of which is that Prions are found in all 
cases tested, a new strain of CJD appears which affects much younger people, 
and one of whose symptoms is the existence of Prions - I presume in all 
ases.
For me that's very good prima facie evidence of some kind of link. I freely 
accept that both BSE & CJD _might_ have some common cause, as yet 
undiscovered, but I don't think it's scaremongering to warn of a _possible_ 
link.
 KL> This is not how science works.
I'm well aware of how science works, I was trained, and worked as a chemist 
until nearly thirty. Were there no chance of any _consequences_ and the 
matter simply an academic exercise, then of course the media attention and 
scientific caution would have been a huge over-reaction. But there ARE grave 
consequences. People die. So far we don't know how many will do so, and 
that's what _really_ worries me. IF there is a causative link, and IF it has 
to do with eating nervous tissue from contaminated animals, then there will 
be a serious "epidemic" of CJD in the UK sometime in the next year or so, 
caused by the long "incubation" period. None of these terms really fit the 
case, but given that I'm not writing a scientific treatise they'll have to 
.
But I'm not a scientist actively researching BSE, so I'm not telling ANYone 
what they should or shouldn't believe. I'm questioning the argument of 
someone who IS doing so, and who, in so doing, is saying that the scare over 
CJD is "much ado about nothing".
 KL> serious injuries, and sues for damages.  The other party claims that
 KL> he was not responsible for the injury.
An interesting sideline. For the sake of argument, assume that, following Dr 
Ratzer's article, someone who previously had kept away from british beef, 
started eating it, and then got sick from CJD, and that subsequently a 
causative link WAS discovered. What, in your opinion, would be their chance 
of successfully suing Dr R?
 KL> Likewise, if someone determines that there is no causative link
 KL> between BSE and CJD, it is not the same as saying he doesn't care
 KL> about the 5000 people suffering from CJD.
Of course. That's obvious. But so far I've not seen ANY evidence that there 
is _no_ causative link. For that matter I've not seen any evidence _proving_ 
there IS a link. The only evidence is inferential.
 KL>> But the CJD-mad cow hypothesis turned out to be wrong.
 IH>> Really? I very much wonder what causes him to say this. Living in
 KL> prove that there -=IS=- a causal link, but they can certainly
 KL> rule one out.
Yes I know that. But what I repeat is that _IF_ such negative evidence 
existed, don't you think that UK politicians and farmers would be trumpetting 
it all over the rooftops? Particularly in an election year, as I said before. 
For me that is damn GOOD evidence that the studies did NOT disprove a link. 
If Dr Ratzen had some good negative evidence in the form of an 
epidemiological study proving conclusively that there were no link, I feel it 
would have been very helpful to have cited it. I simply don't believe he's 
seen such a study.
Without wanting to make too much of this, I should just say that the whole 
sorry story of BSE and its handling in the UK, is a history of scientists 
telling politicians that there was nothing to worry about, (there was) that 
everything was under control and the epedemic was over (it wasn't) and that 
there was absolutely no chance of the disease being transmissible to humans 
(there is such a chance). So forgive me if I say that I take a jaundiced view 
of a similarly reassuring article, which doesn't give good hard evidence for 
the reasons for the author's optimism.
All the Best
Ian
--- GoldED 2.50+
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