Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Meat Spread Over Five States?!? that was one big cow . . .
Go ahead -- point out how silly the media panic-frenzy is relative to the facts. You'll be torn to shreds by the illiterati who are so deeply invested in creating fear -- either as a revenue source or as shiny object of distraction [SOoD]. The major *fix* in this situation was accomplished when the requirements for manufactured feed where changed in 1997. Our best option might be to launch a public education campaign to inform people of the facts of BSE. It will be difficult as the major political and media push will be to effect arcane and byzantine controls on the production and distribution of beef and beef products, instead of actually dealing with the facts. But, moo at windmills I must: The short-course: [executively summarized from An Introduction to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy [BSE] and the Prion Diseases by Don A Franco, DVM< MPH< DVPM] BSE - aka "mad cow disease" - is an entirely new disease entity in cattle, first diagnosed and described in Great Britain in November 1986. It is described as a sub-acute neurodegenerative transmissible spongiform encephalopathy. Comparable to, but not the same as scrapie in sheep and goats, chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, transmissible mink encephalopathy and feline spingiform encephalopathy in kitties, it is also likened to human diseases such as: Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), kuru (restricted to cannibals in Papua New Guinea), Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker syndrome, and fatal familial insomnia (FFI). When identified as a result of transmission of the BSE infection in GB, the resulting condition was termed variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease [v-CJD]. Although not universally agreed upon, the majority believe that the disease is caused by a prion, a normal cell protein found on nerve cell membranes, gone bad. [see Stanley Prusiner, MD awarded a Nobel for its discovery] Unlike a virus or bacterium, prions are resistant to physical and chemical treatments and do not create immune system or inflammatory responses. Having no nuclei acid for reproduction, prions don't act like the usual infectious agents. Apparently, the diseased state of a prion protein involves protein folding and interactions and thence off into darkest bio-chemistry land. Characteristics: --Slow, always fatal, transmissible diseases of the central nervous system in mammals. --Disease takes from months to decades to appear. --The infectious agent in cattle is predominantly limited to the brain, spinal cord, and in general nervous tissues. --The infectious agent has not been detected in muscle tissue, which is what steak and burgers are made of. Cut back on the cow-brain stew. To really oversimplify, the best guess of those studying the disease traces its origin in GB to a change in the rendering processes of animal proteins for animal feed. It is thought/theorized that these changes may have allowed an infectious agent previously killed by the rendering process. [When you hear PETA talk about "cows eating cows," kindly do not think of cattle munching on juicy steak bones. The animal feed product produced by rendering is a completely broken down protein which comes in powder form and is included in pellet feeds. The rendering industry's processing methods kill off infectious agents through long-time, high temperature treatment. The timing and temperature aspects are the part of the rendering process which was changed in GB and which is part of the investigation of the origin of BSE. This aspect of the rendering process has not been changed in the US.] The one [1] animal in Washington state came from Canada. Part of Dr Franco's conclusion:Speculation became rampant, with the media indulging themselves to the fullest. One prognosticator of doom, an academic, heightened his predictions forecasting up to 500,000 deaths from nvCJD by 2000. A research microbiologist especially attuned to the "Last Judgment" philosophy, completely fascinated even the most virulent pessimist by estimating, based on a worst case scenario, as many as 10 million people might develop nvCJD by 2010, approximately one fifth of the population. Drama and emotion became prevalent, and the communication of scientific assessments failed to compete. In reality, regulators were forced into a "two minute offense" - a situation most disdainful to government technocrats, who really prefer the studied approach in the evaluation of considerate options, rather than the "boiler room" pressure of politics and demanding consumerism. Any time science is not a solid basis for a major part of the regulatory decision, serious problems could emerge ...
Biochemist and snarker of the first order! What a guy. I know y'all are too smart to be panicked by media bull-dazzle, but help spread the word. There is a much greater chance of being killed by the flu, hit by a falling terrorist-downed airplane, and winning the lottery without benefit of ticket purchase -- all on the same day -- than to know someone who gets "mad cow disease" from a cheese burger.
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