BC: MAD COW AND DEMENTIA ..
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Getting rid of the whistle-blowers. Dr. Richard Lacey was not the only warning voice. There were others: Haresh Narang, a microbiologist, employed by the Public Laboratory Services in New Castle, said CJD in humans came from BSE. Microbiologist Dr. Steven Doeller, said scrapie, CJD, and BSE were the same thing. But all the cries of the whistle-blowers were ignored.
Then, in 1995, when Dr. Lacey's book was printed, both the British Medical Journal and New Scientist, two of the most respected professional journals in England, declared the book unfit for the reading public. His book made the beef industry so nervous that, in December 1995, three more articles were planted in prestigious British journals: The Economist, Nature, and New Scientist, declaring that there was nothing to worry about; Lacey was dead wrong. Interestingly, all three articles were written by "Anonymous."
U.S. sheep are still fed to cows. The FDA and public health officials all know that diseased sheep that die are fed to cattle. In the U.S., approximately 200,000 animals are slaughtered daily.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
Chaperonins affect protein folding. Chaperonins have been discovered to be key chemicals which are implicated in possibly preventing the mis-folding of proteins which are the basis for BSE/CJD and Alzheimer's.
Nobel Prizes for mad cow research. A Nobel Prize has been awarded to Carleton Gajdusek for Kuru/CJD research. Another Nobel Prize has been awarded to Stanley Prusiner for CJD/Prion research.
Cows, Sheep, Pigs, Mink, and humans have all contracted the disease and died from it. It has been scientifically established that prions cannot be killed merely by boiling or cooking. Dr. Richard Lacey has predicted that, by the year 2015, each year over 200,000 people will die. As of November 10, 2000, the current "official" death toll is 81 in England and 2 in France (AP News).
Narang's testimony. Dr. Haresh Narang, a British microbiologist and CJD researcher, has come forward and said he first detected variant CJD in humans back in 1988. He claims that he was ordered to stop work on BSE, in 1990, and subsequently "laid off." He believes the British authorities have blocked and undermined research and detection efforts into the disease.
The crisis hits France. After ridiculing Britain for over a decade as a decadent society with infected beef, the mad cow crisis hit France in 2000; and it was forced to ban the sale of beef. Many French towns ban beef use in school cafeterias.
Germany also. Germany laughed at both nations for their sloven meat practices,—and then discovered that its own beef supply was infected. Germany has banned beef; and its meat industry is now like that of French and British before it, in shambles. By January 2001, the German government had extended the ban to pigs and deer farms.
Stealing from the zoo. The January 28, 2001, press reports that people are sneaking into the Berlin Zoo, at night, and stealing geese and other animals and eating them! They are afraid to buy meat at the grocery store. (But, very likely, zoo animals are fed the same rendered rations.)
If the situation wasn't so miserable, it would be funny. Read this:
"Nothing seems sacred any more as Germans, confronted by empty shelves at the supermarkets, go foraging for food. With BSE beef already off the menu, followed by sausages and now pork, filling a German belly is becoming nearly impossible. As hunger grips, no one, not even the dedicated Kreuzberg zookeepers, will object to a bit of theft" (AP, from Berlin, January 28, 2001).
"Everyone must get used to elk, reindeer, ostrich, crocodile and other exotic meats which have recently turned up at the shops, or go hunting" (ibid.).
Thyroid, insulin, and other medicinal hormones. As of late 2000, questions are being raised about medicinal thyroid, insulin, and other hormonal extracts,—nearly all of which are extracted from pork or beef. Natural thyroid extracts include Armour Thyroid, and synthetics include Cytomel and Synthroid. The natural ones are taken from the thyroid glands of animals, such as pigs.
How fast does death come? There are several types of variant prions. Some act quickly while others come to full term and produce death more slowly. This may be why some young people have already died from CJD. Recent research on chaperonins (biochemicals that assist in folding proteins) indicates that they may be involved in providing possible additional resistance to the disease. (As mentioned earlier, prion diseases apparently involve mis-folded proteins.)
Analyzing pre-Alzheimer's conditions. It would be helpful to know more about the symptoms which indicate the earliest onset of CJD. Here is data on the early onset of Alzheimer's, which is a similar disease: Scientists claim they could often detect the condition decades early, simply by noting the manner of speech and writing of a person. People with pre-Alzheimer's condition seem to rely more on lists and relationships than logic and cause-and-effect reasoning about the world. They also tend to write shorter, simpler sentences long before clinical neurological deficits become evident. (That research was done using nuns, comparing their original statements of intent to become nuns with their conditions decades later.)
Rendering only legal in America. In all other countries the "cash for corpses" practice is illegal. In the U.S.A., until 1997, it was entirely voluntary whether a farmer renders corpses; so, because they could not ignore free hundred dollar bills, they regularly sold their dead cattle and sheep to the feed companies. It was not until January 3, 1997, that the practice of rendering bodies and using them for animal feed was finally stopped. On that date, it was announced that offal could no longer be used to feed animals eaten by humans.
How to corner the market. In anticipation of all the American beef and feed that would be exported overseas, as a result of the British and European bans on their own beef, the U.S. cornered the world beef and feed market and U.S. grain futures soared to a 15-year high after Britain's admission of BSE in its cattle.
The British protest. But when the U.S. offered to supply them with all their beef, the British screamed that American beef already had plenty of the disease. Declaring that they originally got their sheep offal powder practices from the U.S. in the early 1970s, the British demanded that all American animal products be banned in their country. They also reminded the Americans that meat and bonemeal imported from Britain, from 1980 to 1989, was used for U.S. poultry feed!
U.S. chickens. In reply, the USDA said that they have never found a chicken sick with BSE. But the reason for that is the fact that U.S. chickens are killed before they are old enough to openly manifest the symptoms. No U.S. fryer lives long enough to manifest dementia, but it has lived long enough to give the disease to the person who eats it.
U.S. hunters dying of CJD. Between 1998 and the end of 2000, three young hunters in Western U.S. died from CJD. Other deaths are suspected.
WHO says CJD may have spread worldwide. On December 22, 2000, on behalf of the World Health Organization, Dr. Maura Ricketts issued a statement warning that "exposure worldwide" to BSE and CJD may have already occurred. The statement went on to say the WHO is going to convene a major meeting of experts and officials from all regions to discuss this problem. It will be held in Geneva in late spring 2001. This announcement followed a review of scientific evidence of several experts. "Concerns center on British meat and bonemeal exports in the 10-year period between 1986, when BSE surfaced in Britain, and 1996, when an export ban was imposed on British beef" (Reuters).
Over 90 deaths from CJD in Europe. Since October 1996, alone, over 90 people are acknowledged to have died of CJD, with more dying each year than the year before.
Blood donors banned. On January 17, 2001, the FDA ordered a ban on blood donations in the U.S. from anyone who has lived in Britain or Ireland longer than six months, between the years 1980 and December 1996.
Wild animal BSE increasing in U.S. As of mid-January 2001, mad deer disease, also called chronic wasting disease or CWD, has hit a full 15% of free-ranging deer and elk in northeastern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming.
Deaths from contaminated surgery. A web chat comment provided this item: "A relative of mine, who is a doctor at Tulane University Medical School in New Orleans has firsthand knowledge of a patient who recently underwent surgery there. Apparently, the attending physicians and surgeons were unaware of the patient's condition (CJD). The medical instruments used on this patient were then used on at least 6 others before they were discovered to be infected. The instruments had been properly autoclaved after each surgery, yet each subsequent patient had contracted CJD. There are at least seven confirmed cases of CJD in Louisiana alone right now. This confirms that not only is CJD in the U.S., but it is being misdiagnosed by medical professionals. I was a paramedic in the '80s, and even back then we were taught about CJD and how it wastes the nervous system."
Latest official BSE count. This report is dated December 22, 2000, and comes from Reuters: "Since 1986, 180,000 BSE cases have been confirmed in British cattle, with 1,300 to 1,400 cases elsewhere in Europe (primarily in four countries: France, Ireland, Portugal, and Switzerland, with several dozen cases elsewhere on the continent), according to WHO. Small numbers of cases have been reported in Canada, Argentina, Italy, and Oman; but, in each of these countries, this was only in imported British bovine, it added. In all, 87 cases of CJD have been reported in Britain, three in France, and one in Ireland, according to the agency. " 'We know potentially contaminated materials were exported outside the European Community . . We are trying to identify the countries that we should put our largest effort into,' Ricketts said."
RHODES' NEW BOOK
Pulitzer prize winning author, Richard Rhodes, has published a helpful book, Deadly Feasts, on the controversy. Here are some facts you will find in it:
Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Carleton Gajdusek (one of the foremost researchers of Kuru and other spongiform diseases), has declared that all the pigs in England are infected with BSE; and that means not only pork, but also pig-skin wallets, footballs, but catgut surgical suture. All of these come from pigs (p. 220). Noting that all the chickens fed on meat-and-bone meal are infected, he adds that, in America, beef male cattle are killed at or before age two, before they are likely to show the outward symptoms of the disease.
In America, chicken excreta (manure) is fed to cattle as a good source of nitrogen (p. 258). As for the American FDA's ban on feeding meat and animal by-products to cattle, Rhodes writes "That's a ban with exclusions big enough to drive a cortege of hearses through." Their own BSE advisory committee urged the FDA take stronger measures (page 257).
According to Rhodes' book, bovine spongiform encephalopathy has been detected in America, and not just in cattle. The American form of BSE does not cause the staggers and other behaviors found in British cattle; but instead it results in a more "sedate" collapse of the victim, referred to as "downer cattle." The nature of the brain damage is also distinct; a spongiform with differently shaped and oriented vacancies. Other forms have been transmitted via eating wild squirrels and wild bear. Some American zoos have lost animals to BSE.
Dr. John Pattison, Chairman of the British government's Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC), Dean of the University College of London Medical School, believes 500,000 people may already be incubating CJD in Britain.
Dr. Alsleben has stated that prions can be found in white blood cells, contaminating milk, and even in the animal grease used in lipstick.
On page 222 of Rhodes' book, Richard Lacey of the Microbiology Department of Chapel Allerton Hospital, Leeds, points out that "there was no certainty that the source of infection had been cut off." " 'If it seems that the incubation-period average for CJD in humans begins to be about twenty five years, maybe thirty years,' he told me [Rhodes] grimly, 'then the peak human epidemic will come around the year 2015. If the current numbers of variant CJD cases increases by fifty percent per year, as they well might, that would take it to about two hundred thousand [human] cases a year by then.' " That comment is only about mortalities in Britain.
Why is the body filled with the prion infection before CJD symptoms appear? What are the subtle effects long before the final destruction? If these prions are indeed the rod-like structures researcher Patricia Merz describes on page 156 of Rhodes' book, then they would tend to impede cellular machinery long before they became long enough to break cell membranes and kill the cells. Thus it is possible that, long before that final break, subtle neurological effects could become evident. Dr. Merz has definitely located prions in spleen tissue and elsewhere in the animals, long before any outward symptoms were manifest! This is extremely significant. Prions apparently travel freely in the blood of these animals. Therefore all tissue is likely to harbor some prions, not just brain tissue. This means that large amounts of infected cattle have been fed to other cattle, which after becoming infected, have been sold to the public. But, since the human form of the disease (CJD) is misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's, the medical crisis continues to mount.
THE CRISIS COMES TO AMERICA
Mad Cow hits our shores in two blows—the first was on January 12th, l996, when John Darnton wrote a long article on balmy bovines for the New York Times; the second came March 20th, 1996, when the British government finally admitted to the world that the obscure brain-disintegrating cow malady, called bovine spongiform encephalopathy, was the same disease found in a lot of dead sheep, in the brains of several hundred dead Brits, and the same disease that turned cannibals' brains to mush back in New Guinea in the 1940s.
PRESS RELEASE HEADLINES
We initially included excerpts here from a January 28, 2001 Reuters news release, showing the present BSE/CJD crisis in America. But we will instead place that in the booklet (see last page). That booklet will also contain a list of dozens of animal products used in foods, medicines, etc. In place of that Reuters article, here is a collection of news headlines, spanning several months,—which show how explosive this crisis is becoming! We could have added a hundred pages of data to this study, but must conclude this study, so we can write on other pressing matters. Consider this:
New mad cow cases in France; four herds killed / U.S. orders Vermont sheep killed over mad cow fears / UK's human mad cow cases rise 20%-30% in one year / Vermont sheep loss declared "no threat to humans" / Young UK woman's death blamed on mad cow / Mad deer disease spreads to Wisconsin / Infected venison may be fatal / Scientist says mad cow may kill 500,000 Britons / Nobel scientist says mad cow may infect millions of sheep / Some "herbal" supplements contain raw animal parts and risk of mad cow / Scientists now warn of mad cow risk in dental procedures / Human mad cow deaths in UK now rising 33% per year / USDA in state of emergency over mad cow in Vermont sheep / Mad cow and Alzheimer's proteins are similar / Mad cow worries increase over milk supply / Humans may be secret mad cow carriers / Mad cow / CJD species-jumping revelation confirms worst fears / Now known that mad cow may be spread by pork, lamb, and poultry / Mad cow and CJD may be transmitted invisibly / Canada fearing CJD bars blood donors / Rising death toll from human BSE / "Whirling disease" in trout is fish version of mad cow and mad deer disease / Strongest evidence yet that CJD is spread by blood transfusions / Blood donors with no symptoms can pass CJD / French cows eat infected feed linked to mad cow / Prions survive digestive tract / Terrible death of CJD girl videotaped in England / Scientists warn CJD can spread in dental and surgical procedures / Eight patients may have mad cow from reused "sterile" surgical instruments / Anti-aging creams exposed women to CJD risk / UK scientist says every Britisher has "eaten 50 BSE meals" / Swiss to ban all animal meal in livestock feed / EU plans to outlaw British blood / Barrels of BSE waste float away in Britain's worst floods / BSE-infected chemicals may be in UK water supply / Half of UK tonsil tools could carry mad cow / UK refuses to ban surgical instruments in tonsil removal, in spite of CJD / France calls for immediate moratorium on bonemeal in feed / mad cow panic spreading through Europe / France bans animal meal in livestock feed / French beef sales off 50% as mad cow fear deepens / Dutch discover seventh mad cow case / Lion in British zoo dies of mad cow / Mad cow now found in Azores; all cattle to be slaughtered / Spain in panic over first mad cow / Germany finds first two mad cow cases / Government tells UK physicians not to tell patients of CJD blood concerns / EU wants slaughter of 2 million cattle to curb BSE / Europeans starting to eat horse meat / Louisiana man exposed to mad cow during surgery sues hospital / German scientists first to test soil for mad cow link / Mad cow scare spreading beyond Europe / Russian man dies of CJD; first Russian case / Another American victim / Spain confirms second mad cow case / CJD death toll being played down / More European deaths from mad cow / Horse meat sales soar in Germany / Crisis will cost patients billions to insure safer invasive instruments / France bans blood from people who lived in the UK during 1980-1996 / Not all "single-use" medical instruments are used only once / Blood of Irish CJD victim used to make 83,000 doses of polio vaccine / Mad cow crisis sends Blair government into disarray / WHO says mad cow may have spread worldwide / German health chief demands mad cow and scrapie tests / Another mad cow in Germany / French to sue Britains over BSE / Beef sales fall 80% in Germany / Britain is slaughtering, eating its wild ponies.
CONCLUSION
What about cooking the meat or milk? The pasteurizing of milk, at 150 degrees, makes the prion think it's a sunny day. The cooking of meat at 212 degrees makes him think he's in a pleasant sauna. Raising the heat to frying in the 320 range might make him even blink; but you must reduce the prion to total ash at 340 degrees centigrade (in our American fahrenheit system that would be 800 degrees), to immobilize him and take away his ability to replicate.
What about the BSE/CJD spore? There is no solvent known to immobilize the Mad-Cow spore. This kind of microbial tenacity is so far-fetched that it frightens the medical community. If you ask a doctor to do an autopsy of a patient who died of CJD, he flees, knowing that if he exposes his lab to this disease, the lab will be closed down by government officials. He cannot clean his sink without burning it up! By the way, when asked about this by worried reporters, Paul Brown of the NIH reassured them. He said he could clean prions off his hands with Ivory soap. We welcome him to try it in public.
Any other solution? The medical community has no cure for CJD. It is—very simply—fatal. There is no drug or surgery which can cure it. But Dr. Richard Deandrea says that if you think you've been exposed, enzyme therapy might work, seeing that proteins can be dissolved by enzymes which are found in raw foods. But Dr. Prusiner has written that this protein molecule laughs off all the enzymes he tried on it.
More than just meat is infected. If Mad Cow is in meat, it could be in dairy products and eggs. It is in mayonnaise. It's in the gelatin in candy or wrapped around a vitamin pill. It's in blood meal fertilizer, urea fertilizer, and the manure clinging to store-bought mushrooms. Animal derivatives are used in vaccines, pharmaceuticals like Premarin, in glandular substances used in remedies such as melatonin. It is in pet food, gloves, film, plastics. British leather was banned by Egypt a week after Minister Dorrell's admission. |
