🚀 go-pugleaf

On 8 Jan 2004 12:43:46 -0800, banmilk@hotmail.com (Ron) wrote:

>Could Mad Cow Disease Already Be Killing Thousands Of Americans Every Year?

Could that possibility be in the same likelihood bracket as Could
Americans have Killed Hundreds of Thousands Iraqis last year?

"Torsten Brinch" <iaotb@inet.uni2.dk> wrote in message
news:6ihrvvcio5lhmdjab661i7mpf5rju2bv5h@4ax.com...

> On 8 Jan 2004 12:43:46 -0800, banmilk@hotmail.com (Ron) wrote:
>
> >Could Mad Cow Disease Already Be Killing Thousands Of Americans Every
Year?
>
> Could that possibility be in the same likelihood bracket as Could
> Americans have Killed Hundreds of Thousands Iraqis last year?

There is a difference.
1.  We know prions cause CJD and we know that US and
Canadian regulations permit prion-carrying beef parts in
chicken feed and permit chicken parts in beef feed.
(Both are prohibited in Europe.)
2.  We do not know what caused the USA to kill any
Iraqis last year.  (Well, the official reasons turned out
to be unfactual, but no others have been suggested.)

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada)

On Thu, 8 Jan 2004 17:54:01 -0500, ey925@freenet.carleton.ca (Don
Phillipson) wrote:

>"Torsten Brinch" <iaotb@inet.uni2.dk> wrote in message
>news:6ihrvvcio5lhmdjab661i7mpf5rju2bv5h@4ax.com...
>
>> On 8 Jan 2004 12:43:46 -0800, banmilk@hotmail.com (Ron) wrote:
>>
>> >Could Mad Cow Disease Already Be Killing Thousands Of 
>> >Americans Every Year?
>>
>> Could that possibility be in the same likelihood bracket as Could
>> Americans have Killed Hundreds of Thousands Iraqis last year?
>
>There is a difference.
>1.  We know prions cause CJD and we know that US and
>Canadian regulations permit prion-carrying beef parts in
>chicken feed and permit chicken parts in beef feed.
>(Both are prohibited in Europe.)
>2.  We do not know what caused the USA to kill any
>Iraqis last year.  (Well, the official reasons turned out
>to be unfactual, but no others have been suggested.)

The hypothesis has been raised from the Iraqi side, that
Americans are suffering from  Mad Dog Disease (kinda 
 like rabies I imagine, once bitten, now runs wildly  biting 
back with a foamy mouth ). If so, recent poll numbers 
would indicate a prevalence of the disease in the US 
population  of about 50%.

In article <436a5d81.0401081243.5361955d@posting.google.com>,
 banmilk@hotmail.com (Ron) wrote:

I am greatly impressed with the hard work, organization and detail so  
obvious in this article, and grateful for the references, but I feel Dr. 
Greger's article  is fatally weakened by his uncritical acceptance of 
the basic proposition that human exposure to the source of CJD/vCJD is 
from "eating meat".

Transmission of CJD easily  occurs through direct innoculation of tissue 
from brain to brain during medical proceedures. As reported in Nature 25 
April 1996, there was an outbreak of CJD cases in the UK during the 
1980s from experimental treatments of children with human growth hormone 
manufactured from pituitary glands derived from cadavers. i.e. 
manufacturing medicines.

It is not clear where all the cases occurred but the high court opened 
an inquiry on 8 of the 17 cases of CJD contracted in the UK (3 were 
reported in the USA) All but one, at that time had died.  There were 
reportedly 200 other court cases pending at that time. This would 
suggest that,  quite conservatively, the number of CJD cases among 
"young people" in 1996 was substantially greater than the  143, 145, 147 
or 150 cases of vCJD diagnosed over the last 20 years purportedly from 
"eating beef" 

I do not ever recall reading newspaper articles or hearing warnings 
about the safety of hormone treatments, or the safety of medical 
treatments, although I do recall reading a highly intellectual non 
specific article in the New York Review of Books by Ivan Illich on 
iatrogenic (medically induced) illnesses. Doesn't it appear more 
reasonable to assume that the current human cases are connected with the 
mecical-industrial-stock market complex? 

It would not seem to be in the interest of the medical profession to 
warn the public that they are in great danger when in a doctor's office 
or in a hospital, although it is common to be warned about eating too 
much and eating fast food or eating and drinking/

When reading "sporadic" or "spontaneous" one should keep in mind that 
both words mean "Doctors don't know what caused this"

It seems to me that with virus, viral particles and abstractions named 
"prions" we are on the margin between "life' and "inanimate matter", a 
prime subject for long term, basic research probably impossible due to 
public hysteria.

For my part I am astounded, humbled and fearful whenever I think of the 
uproar over "mad cow" and the quiet acceptance of the progressive 
militarization of our global society, especially in my own country.

Jim Scanlon

> from http://www.rense.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Could Mad Cow Disease Already 
> Be Killing Thousands Of
> Americans Every Year?
> By Michael Greger, M.D.
> 1-8-4
> 
> 
> October 2001, 34-year-old Washington State native Peter Putnam started
> losing his mind. One month he was delivering a keynote business
> address, the next he couldn't form a complete sentence. Once athletic,
> soon he couldn't walk. Then he couldn't eat. After a brain biopsy
> showed it was Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, his doctor could no longer
> offer any hope. "Just take him home and love him," the doctor
> counseled his family.[1,2,3] Peter's tragic death, October 2002, may
> have been caused by Mad Cow disease.
>   
> Seven years earlier and 5000 miles away, Stephen Churchill was the
> first in England to die. His first symptoms of depression and
> dizziness gave way to a living nightmare of terrifying hallucinations;
> he was dead in 12 months at age 19.[4] Next was Peter Hall, 20, who
> showed the first signs of depression around Christmas, 1994. By the
> next Christmas, he couldn't walk, talk, or do anything for himself.[5]
> Then it was Anna's turn, then Michelle's. Michelle Bowen, age 29, died
> in a coma three weeks after giving birth to her son via emergency
> cesarean section. Then it was Alison's turn. These were the first five
> named victims of Britain's Mad Cow epidemic. They died from what the
> British Secretary of Health called the worst form of death imaginable,
> Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a relentlessly progressive and invariably
> fatal human dementia.[6] The announcement of their deaths, released on
> March 20, 1996 (ironically, Meatout Day[7]), reversed the British
> government's decade-old stance that British beef was safe to eat.[8]
>   
> It is now considered an "incontestable fact" that these human deaths
> in Britain were caused by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), or
> Mad Cow disease.[9] Bovine means "cow or cattle," spongiform means
> "sponge-like," and encephalopathy means "brain disease." Mad Cow
> disease is caused by unconventional pathogens called prions--literally
> infectious proteins--which, because of their unique structure, are
> practically invulnerable, surviving even incineration[10] at
> temperatures hot enough to melt lead.[11] The leading theory as to how
> cows got Mad Cow disease in the first place is by eating diseased
> sheep infected with a sheep spongiform encephalopathy called
> scrapie.[12]
>   
> In humans, prions can cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a human
> spongiform encephalopathy whose clinical picture can involve weekly
> deterioration into blindness and epilepsy as one's brain becomes
> riddled with tiny holes.
>   
> We've known about Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease for decades, since well
> before the first mad cow was discovered in 1985. Some cases of CJD
> seemed to run in families; other cases seemed to just arise
> spontaneously in about one in a million people every year, and were
> hence dubbed "sporadic." The new form of CJD caused by eating beef
> from cows infected with Mad Cow disease, though, seemed to differ from
> the classic sporadic CJD.
>   
> The CJD caused by infected meat has tended to strike younger people,
> has produced more psychotic symptoms, and has often dragged on for a
> year or more. The most defining characteristic, though, was found when
> their brains were sampled. The brain pathology was vividly reminiscent
> of Kuru, a disease once found in a New Guinea tribe of cannibals who
> ate the brains of their dead.[13] Scientists called this new form of
> the disease "variant" CJD.
>   
> Other than Charlene, a 24 year old woman now so tragically dying in
> Florida, who was probably infected in Britain, there have been no
> reported cases of variant CJD in the U.S.[14] Hundreds of confirmed
> cases of the sporadic form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, however,
> arise in the United States every year,[15] but the beef industry is
> quick to point out these are cases of sporadic CJD, not the new
> variant known to be caused by Mad Cow disease.[16] Of course, no one
> knows what causes sporadic CJD. New research, discussed below,
> suggests that not hundreds but thousands of Americans die of sporadic
> CJD every year, and that some of these CJD deaths may be caused by
> eating infected meat after all.
>   
> Although the fact that Mad Cow disease causes variant CJD had already
> been strongly established, researchers at the University College of
> London nevertheless created transgenic mice complete with "humanized"
> brains genetically engineered with human genes to try to prove the
> link once and for all. When the researchers injected one strain of the
> "humanized" mice with infected cow brains, they came down with the
> same brain damage seen in human variant CJD, as expected. But when
> they tried this in a different strain of transgenic "humanized" mice,
> those mice got sick too, but most got sick from what looked exactly
> like sporadic CJD! The Mad Cow prions caused a disease that had a
> molecular signature indistinguishable from sporadic CJD. To the extent
> that animal experiments can simulate human results, their shocking
> conclusion was that eating infected meat might be responsible for some
> cases of sporadic CJD in addition to the expected variant CJD. The
> researchers concluded that "it is therefore possible that some
> patients with [what looks like]... sporadic CJD may have a disease
> arising from BSE exposure."[17] Laura Manuelidis, section chief of
> surgery in the neuropathology department at Yale University comments,
> "Now people are beginning to realize that because something looks like
> sporadic CJD they can't necessarily conclude that it's not linked to
> [Mad Cow disease]..."[18]
>   
> This is not the first time meat was linked to sporadic CJD. In 2001, a
> team of French researchers found, to their complete surprise, a strain
> of scrapie--"mad sheep" disease--that caused the same brain damage in
> mice as sporadic CJD.[19] "This means we cannot rule out that at least
> some sporadic CJD may be caused by some strains of scrapie," says team
> member Jean-Philippe Deslys of the French Atomic Energy Commission's
> medical research laboratory.[20]
>   
> Population studies had failed to show a link between CJD and lamb
> chops, but this French research provided an explanation why. There
> seem to be six types of sporadic CJD and there are more than 20
> strains of scrapie. If only some sheep strains affect only some
> people, studies of entire populations may not clearly show the
> relationship. Monkeys fed infected sheep brains certainly come down
> with the disease.[21] Hundreds of "mad sheep" were found in the U.S.
> in 2003.[22] Scrapie remains such a problem in the United States that
> the USDA has issued a scrapie "declaration of emergency."[23] Maybe
> some cases of sporadic CJD in the U.S. are caused by sheep meat as
> well.[24]
>   
> Pork is also a potential source of infection. Cattle remains are still
> boiled down and legally fed to pigs (as well as chickens) in this
> country. The FDA allows this exemption because no "naturally
> occurring" porcine (pig) spongiform encephalopathy has ever been
> found. But American farmers typically kill pigs at just five months of
> age, long before the disease is expected to show symptoms. And,
> because pigs are packed so tightly together, it would be difficult to
> spot neurological conditions like spongiform encephalopathies, whose
> most obvious symptoms are movement and gait disturbances. We do know,
> however, that pigs are susceptible to the disease--laboratory
> experiments show that pigs can indeed be infected by Mad Cow
> brains[25]--and hundreds of thousands of downer pigs, too sick or
> crippled by injury to even walk, arrive at U.S. slaughterhouses every
> year.[26]
>   
> A number of epidemiological studies have suggested a link between pork
> consumption and sporadic CJD. Analyzing peoples' diet histories, the
> development of CJD was associated with eating roast pork, ham, hot
> dogs, pork chops, smoked pork, and scrapple (a kind of pork pudding
> made from various hog carcass scraps). The researchers concluded, "The
> present study indicated that consumption of pork as well as its
> processed products (e.g., ham, scrapple) may be considered as risk
> factors in the development of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease." Compared to
> people that didn't eat ham, for example, those who included ham in
> their diet seemed ten times more likely to develop CJD.[27] In fact,
> the USDA may have actually recorded an outbreak of "mad pig" disease
> in New York 25 years ago, but still refuses to reopen the
> investigation despite petitions from the Consumer's Union (the
> publishers of Consumer Reports magazine).[28]
>   
> Sporadic CJD has also been associated with weekly beef
> consumption,[29] as well as the consumption of roast lamb,[30] veal,
> venison, brains in general,[31] and, in North America, seafood.[32,33]
> The development of CJD has also, surprisingly, been significantly
> linked to exposure to animal products in fertilizer,[34] sport fishing
> and deer hunting in the U.S.,[35] and frequent exposure to leather
> products.[36]
>   
> We do not know at this time whether chicken meat poses a risk. There
> was a preliminary report of ostriches allegedly fed risky feed in
> German zoos who seemed to come down with a spongiform
> encephalopathy.[37] Even if chickens and turkeys themselves are not
> susceptible, though, they may become so-called "silent carriers" of
> Mad Cow prions and pass them on to human consumers.[38] Dateline NBC
> quoted D. Carleton Gajdusek, the first to be awarded a Nobel Prize in
> Medicine for his work on prion diseases,[39] as saying, "it's got to
> be in the pigs as well as the cattle. It's got to be passing through
> the chickens."[40] Dr. Paul Brown, medical director for the US Public
> Health Service, believes that pigs and poultry could indeed be
> harboring Mad Cow disease and passing it on to humans, adding that
> pigs are especially sensitive to the disease. "It's speculation," he
> says, "but I am perfectly serious."[41]
>   
> The recent exclusion of most cow brains, eyes, spinal cords, and
> intestines from the human food supply may make beef safer, but where
> are those tissues going? These potentially infectious tissues continue
> to go into animal feed for chickens, other poultry, pigs, and pets (as
> well as being rendered into products like tallow for use in cosmetics,
> the safety of which is currently under review[42]). Until the federal
> government stops the feeding of slaughterhouse waste, manure, and
> blood to all farm animals, the safety of meat in America cannot be
> guaranteed.
>   
> The hundreds of American families stricken by sporadic CJD every year
> have been told that it just occurs by random chance. Professor
> Collinge, the head of the University College of London lab, noted
> "When you counsel those who have the classical sporadic disease, you
> tell them that it arises spontaneously out of the blue. I guess we can
> no longer say that."
>   
> "We are not saying that all or even most cases of sporadic CJD are as
> a result of BSE exposure," Professor Collinge continued, "but some
> more recent cases may be--the incidence of sporadic CJD has shown an
> upward trend in the UK over the last decade... serious consideration
> should be given to a proportion of this rise being BSE-related.
> Switzerland, which has had a substantial BSE epidemic, has noted a
> sharp recent increase in sporadic CJD."[43] In the Nineties,
> Switzerland had the highest rate of Mad Cow disease in continental
> Europe, and their rate of sporadic CJD doubled.[44]
>   
> We don't know exactly what's happening to the rate of CJD in this
> country, in part because CJD is not an officially notifiable
> illness.[45] Currently only a few states have such a requirement.
> Because the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) does not actively
> monitor the disease on a national level,[46] a rise similar to the one
> in Europe could be missed.[47] In spite of this, a number of U.S. CJD
> clusters have already been found. In the largest known U.S. outbreak
> of sporadic cases to date,[48] five times the expected rate was found
> to be associated with cheese consumption in Pennsylvania's Lehigh
> Valley.[49] A striking increase in CJD over expected levels was also
> reported in Florida[50] and New York (Nassau County)[51] with
> anecdotal reports of clusters of deaths in Oregon[52] and New
> Jersey.[53]
>   
> Perhaps particularly worrisome is the seeming increase in CJD deaths
> among young people in this country. In the 18 years between 1979 and
> 1996, only a single case of sporadic CJD was found in someone under
> 30. Whereas between 1997 and 2001, five people under 30 died of
> sporadic CJD. So five young Americans dying in five years, as opposed
> to one young case in the previous 18 years. The true prevalence of CJD
> among any age group in this country remains a mystery, though, in part
> because it is so commonly misdiagnosed.[54]
>   
> The most frequent misdiagnosis of CJD among the elderly is Alzheimer's
> disease.[55] Neither CJD nor Alzheimer's can be conclusively diagnosed
> without a brain biopsy,[56] and the symptoms and pathology of both
> diseases overlap. There can be spongy changes in Alzheimer's, for
> example, and senile Alzheimer's plaques in CJD.[57] Stanley Prusiner,
> the scientist who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of prions,
> speculates that Alzheimer's may even turn out to be a prion disease as
> well.[58] In younger victims, CJD is more often misdiagnosed as
> multiple sclerosis or as a severe viral infection.[59]
>   
> Over the last 20 years the rates of Alzheimer's disease in the United
> States have skyrocketed.[60] According to the CDC, Alzheimer's Disease
> is now the eighth leading cause of death in the United States,[61]
> afflicting an estimated 4 million Americans.[62] Twenty percent or
> more of people clinically diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, though,
> are found at autopsy not to have had Alzheimer's at all.[63] A number
> of autopsy studies have shown that a few percent of Alzheimer's deaths
> may in fact be CJD. Given the new research showing that infected beef
> may be responsible for some sporadic CJD, thousands of Americans may
> already be dying because of Mad Cow disease every year.[64]
>   
> Nobel Laureate Gajdusek, for example, estimates that 1% of people
> showing up in Alzheimer clinics actually have CJD.[65] At Yale, out of
> a series of 46 patients clinically diagnosed with Alzheimer's, six
> were proven to have CJD at autopsy.[66] In another study of brain
> biopsies, out of a dozen patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's according
> to established criteria, three of them were actually dying from
> CJD.[67] An informal survey of neuropathologists registered a
> suspicion that CJD accounts for 2-12% of all dementias in general.[68]
> Two autopsy studies showed a CJD rate among dementia deaths of about
> 3%.[69,70] A third study, at the University of Pennsylvania, showed
> that 5% of patients diagnosed with dementia had CJD.[71] Although only
> a few hundred cases of sporadic CJD are officially reported in the
> U.S. annually,[72] hundreds of thousands of Americans die with
> dementia every year.[73] Thousands of these deaths may actually be
> from CJD caused by eating infected meat.
>   
> The incubation period for human spongiform encephalopathies such as
> CJD can be decades.[74] This means it can be years between eating
> infected meat and getting diagnosed with the death sentence of CJD.
> Although only about 150 people have so far been diagnosed with variant
> CJD worldwide, it will be many years before the final death toll is
> known. In the United States, an unknown number of animals are infected
> with Mad Cow disease, causing an unknown number of human deaths from
> CJD. The U.S. should immediately begin testing all cows destined for
> human consumption, as is done in Japan, should stop feeding
> slaughterhouse waste to all farm animals (see
> http://organicconsumers.org/madcow/GregerBSE.cfm), and should
> immediately enact an active national surveillance program for CJD.[75]
>   
> Five years ago this week, the Center for Food Safety, the Humane
> Farming Association, the Center for Media & Democracy, and ten
> families of CJD victims petitioned the FDA and the CDC to immediately
> enact a national CJD monitoring system, including the mandatory
> reporting of CJD in all 50 states.[76] The petition was denied.[77]
> The CDC argued that their passive surveillance system tracking death
> certificate diagnoses was adequate. Their analysis of death
> certificates in three states and two cities, for example, showed an
> overall stable and typical one in a million CJD incidence rate from
> 1979 to 1993.[78] But CJD is so often misdiagnosed, and autopsies are
> so infrequently done, that this system may not provide an accurate
> assessment.[79]
>   
> In 1997, the CDC set up the National Prion Disease Pathology
> Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University to analyze
> brain tissue from CJD victims in the U.S. in hopes of tracking any new
> developments. In Europe, surveillance centers have been seeing most,
> if not all, cases of CJD. The U.S. center sees less than half. "I'm
> very unhappy with the numbers," laments Pierluigi Gambetti , the
> director of the Center. "The British and Germans politely smile when
> they see we examine 30% or 40% of the cases," he says. "They know
> unless you examine 80% or more, you are not in touch."[80] "The chance
> of losing an important case is high."[81]
>   
> One problem is that many doctors don't even know the Center exists.
> And neither the CDC nor the Center are evidently authorized to reach
> out to them directly to bolster surveillance efforts, because it's
> currently up to each state individually to determine how--or even
> whether--they will track the disease. In Europe, in contrast, the
> national centers work directly with each affected family and their
> physicians.[82] In the U.S., most CJD cases--even the confirmed
> ones--seem to just fall through the cracks. In fact, based on the
> autopsy studies at Yale and elsewhere, it seems most CJD cases in the
> U.S. aren't even picked up in the first place.
>   
> Autopsy rates have dropped in the U.S. from 50% in the Sixties to less
> than 10% at present.[83] Although one reason autopsies are rarely
> performed on atypical dementia cases is that medical professionals are
> afraid of catching the disease,[84] the primary reason for the decline
> in autopsy rates in general appears to be financial. There is
> currently no direct reimbursement to doctors or hospitals for doing
> autopsies, which often forces the family to absorb the cost of
> transporting the body to an autopsy center and having the brain
> samples taken, a tab that can run upwards of $1500.[85]
>   
> Another problem is that the National Prion Disease Pathology
> Surveillance Center itself remains underfunded. Paul Brown, medical
> director for the National Institutes of Health, has described the
> Center's budget as "pitiful," complaining that "there isn't any budget
> for CJD surveillance."[86] To adequately survey America's 290 million
> residents, "you need a lot of money." UK CJD expert Robert Will
> explains, "There was a CJD meeting of families in America in which...
> [the CDC] got attacked fairly vigorously because there wasn't proper
> surveillance. You could only do proper surveillance if you have
> adequate resources."[87] "I compare this to the early days of AIDS,"
> says protein chemist Shu Chen, who directs the Center's lab, "when no
> one wanted to deal with the crisis."[88]
>   
> Andrew Kimbrell, the director of the Center for Food Safety, a
> D.C.-based public interest group, writes, "Given what we know now, it
> is unconscionable that the CDC is not strictly monitoring these
> diseases."[89] Given the presence of Mad Cow disease in the U.S., we
> need to immediately enact uniform active CJD surveillance on a
> national level, provide adequate funding not only for autopsies but
> also for the shipment of bodies, and require mandatory reporting of
> the disease in all 50 states. In Britain, even feline spongiform
> encephalopathy, the cat version of Mad Cow disease, is an officially
> notifiable illness. "No one has looked for CJD systematically in the
> U.S.," notes NIH medical director Paul Brown. "Ever."[90]
>   
> The animal agriculture industries continue to risk public safety, and
> the government seems to protect the industries' narrow business
> interests more than it protects its own citizens. Internal USDA
> documents retrieved through the Freedom of Information Act show that
> our government did indeed consider a number of precautionary measures
> as far back as 1991 to protect the American public from Mad Cow
> disease. According to one such document, however, the USDA explained
> that the "disadvantage" of these measures was that "the cost to the
> livestock and rendering industries would be substantial."[91]
>   
> Plant sources of protein for farm animals can cost up to 30% more than
> cattle remains.[92] The Cattlemen's Association admitted a decade ago
> that animal agribusiness could indeed find economically feasible
> alternatives to feeding slaughterhouse waste to other animals, but
> that the they did not want to set a precedent of being ruled by
> "activists."[93]
>   
> Is it a coincidence that USDA Secretary Veneman chose Dale Moore,
> former chief lobbyist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association,
> as her chief of staff?[94] Or Alison Harrison, former director of
> public relations for the Cattlemen's Association, as her official
> spokeswoman?[95] Or that one of the new Mad Cow committee appointees
> is William Hueston, who was paid by the beef industry to testify
> against Oprah Winfrey in hopes of convicting her of beef
> "disparagement"?[96] After a similar conflict of interest unfolded in
> Britain, their entire Ministry of Agriculture was dissolved and an
> independent Food Safety Agency was created, whose sole responsibility
> is to protect the public's health. Until we learn from Britain's
> lesson, and until the USDA stops treating this as a PR problem to be
> managed instead of a serious global threat,[97] millions of Americans
> will remain at risk.
>   
> Michael Greger, M.D., has been the Chief BSE Investigator for Farm
> Sanctuary since 1993 and the Mad Cow Coordinator for the Organic
> Consumers Association since 2001.
>   
> For periodic updates on the Mad Cow crisis send a blank email to
> DrGregerMadCowUpdates-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
>   
>   
>   
> REFERENCES: 
>   
> (Full text of specific articles available by emailing
> article-request@DrGreger.org)
>   
> 1 Spokesman Review. 22 September 2003
> http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/putnam92203.cfm
>   
> 2 HealthDayNews. 26 September 2003
> http://www.healthday.com/view.cfm?id=515265
>   
> 3 Reuters. 27 December 2003
> http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/cjd122703.cfm
>   
> 4 Moyes, Jojo. "Depression Leads to Painful Death." Independent 21
> March 1996: 1.
>   
> 5 "Victims' Families Cry Cover-Up by Protecting Beef Industry,
> Government Cost Lives, They Say." Miami Herald 26 March 1996: 7A.
>   
> 6 PA News 30 November 1998. 
>   
> 7 http://meatout.org/ 
>   
> 8 Brown, Paul. "Beef Crisis." Guardian 26 March 1996a: 7. 
>   
> 9 British Medical Journal 322(2001):841. 
>   
> 10 Journal of Infectious Diseases 161 (1990): 467-472. 
>   
> 11 Bentor, Yinon. Chemical Element.com - Lead. Jun. 3, 2003.
> http://www.chemicalelements.com/elements/pb.html
>   
> 12 British Medical Journal 322(2001):841. 
>   
> 13 Bulletin of the World Health Organization 70 (1992): 183- 190. 
>   
> 14 http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/florida1304.cfm 
>   
> 15 Journal of the American Medical Association, November 8, 2000;
> 284(18).
>   
> 16 http://www.bseinfo.org/dsp/dsplocationContent.cfm?locationId=1267 
>   
> 17 "BSE prions propagate as either variant CJD-like or sporadic
> CJD-like prion strains in transgenic mice expressing human prion
> protein." EMBO Journal, Vol. 21, No. 23, 6358-6368, 2002.
> http://emboj.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/full/21/23/6358
>   
> 18 United Press International. 29 December 2003.
> http://organicconsumers.org/madcow/CJD122903.cfm
>   
> 19 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98(2001):4142. 
>   
> 20 "BSE may cause more CJD cases than thought New Scientist 28
> November 2002.
>   
> 21 Journal of Infectious Disease 142(1980):205-8. 
>   
> 22 
> http://www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/nahps/scrapie/yearly_report/yearly-report.html
>   
> 23 March 17, 2000 Federal Register (Volume 65,:Page 14521).
> http://www.mad-cow.org/00/apr00scrapie.html
>   
> 24 "Sheep consumption: a possible source of spongiform encephalopathy
> in humans." Neuroepidemiology. 4(1985):240-9.
>   
> 25 The Veterinary Record 127(1990):338. 
>   
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> FAIR USE NOTICE

               Here is the news article on CJD epidemic from Nature 25                          
April, 1996 by  Ruth Bell

               MRC faces negligence claims over growth hormone 

              London. Britain's Medical Research Council (MRC) was in
              court last week facing allegations of negligence in the
              experimental treatment in the 1960s and 1970s of children
              using human growth hormone (hGH) from the pituitary
              glands of people who had died.

              The programme was discontinued in 1985, after three
              patients who had undergone the treatment in the United
              States died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). Later
              that year a new technique for manufacturing hGH by
              genetic engineering became available.

              The High Court in London has now opened a hearing on
              eight of 17 cases of CJD contracted by individuals in the
              United Kingdom treated with hGH before 1985. All but one
              of the 17 have since died.

              Families of the eight victims started legal action
              against both the MRC and the Department of Health after
              the latter turned down calls for a public inquiry. At
              issue is whether the MRC and the department owed a duty
              of care to the children undergoing hGH treatment and, if
              so, whether they were in breach of that duty.

              The families allege that the two bodies were negligent in
              not taking into account evidence that CJD was
              transmissible, not ensuring that no pituitaries were
              taken from people suffering from neurological disease,
              and not using the safest method of extraction of the
              hormone.

              The MRC began the hGH programme in 1957 and ran it until
              the Department of Health took over control in 1976. But
              the MRC continued to manufacture the hormone until 1980,
              while the Department of Health was setting up production
              facilities at the Centre for Applied Microbiology and
              Research at Porton Down.

              Between 1957 and 1980 the only source of the hormone was
              the pituitary glands of people who had recently died.
              "Demand for the human growth hormone increased because it
              was a successful treatment," says a spokesman for the
              MRC. Nearly 2,000 people received the hormone treatment.

              Over the period when hGH was extracted from cadavers,
              nearly one million pituitary glands were used in the
              United Kingdom. Mortuary attendants removed the glands
              and at one stage "received a nominal fee of twenty pence
              per gland". This system was later changed and mortuary
              attendants were paid a flat rate for the extra work
              involved in removing the glands.

              According to Hugh Fraser, former head of the
              Neuropathogenesis Unit at the Institute for Animal Health
              in Edinburgh -- and an expert witness in the court case
              -- a critical question the judge will have to decide is
              "what knowledge was in place and when".

              As early as the late 1950s, it was recognized that
              scrapie-like diseases (such as CJD) might be
              transmissible. Later it was shown that biopsy material
              taken from the brain of a patient with CJD induced a
              similar brain disease when injected into a chimpanzee.

              Such information raised warning signals among
              researchers. In October 1976, for example, Alan
              Dickinson, then head of the Disease Studies Unit at the
              Agricultural Research Council's laboratory in Edinburgh,
              says he telephoned the MRC to inform them of potential
              risks in the procedure.

              A spokesman for the MRC said last week that when the
              first evidence suggested the possibility of potential
              risks, it was investigated. "When the evidence became
              substantive, they stopped using it," he added.

              Richard Nicholson, editor of The Bulletin of Medical
              Ethics, points out that doctors providing a drug or a
              hormone as a treatment have a duty to inform their
              patients of any known side-effects. "The question is, at
              what stage did the MRC know about these risks?", he says.

              While acknowledging that contaminated hGH was the source
              of the CJD infection, the Department of Health and the
              MRC deny negligence. In a statement issued last week, the
              MRC says that many people recognize that no form of
              medical treatment is without risk, and denies that it was
              negligent in supporting and monitoring the trial.

              Irwin Mitchell, the solicitors for the plaintiffs, say
              that the court's judgement will have a direct effect on a
              further 200 cases now pending that have been filed on
              behalf of those who have not developed CJD as a result of
              hGH treatment, but fear that they may do so.

If it matters, I'm convinced that both my mother in law and sister in law have had Mad Cow Disease 
for decades.  And yes, they have been slowly killing me.

"Jim Scanlon" <j.scanlon@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:j.scanlon-12614A.19452308012004@netnews.comcast.net...
> In article <436a5d81.0401081243.5361955d@posting.google.com>,
>  banmilk@hotmail.com (Ron) wrote:
>
> I am greatly impressed with the hard work, organization and detail so
> obvious in this article, and grateful for the references, but I feel Dr.
> Greger's article  is fatally weakened by his uncritical acceptance of
> the basic proposition that human exposure to the source of CJD/vCJD is
> from "eating meat".
>
> Transmission of CJD easily  occurs through direct innoculation of tissue
> from brain to brain during medical proceedures. As reported in Nature 25
> April 1996, there was an outbreak of CJD cases in the UK during the
> 1980s from experimental treatments of children with human growth hormone
> manufactured from pituitary glands derived from cadavers. i.e.
> manufacturing medicines.
>
> It is not clear where all the cases occurred but the high court opened
> an inquiry on 8 of the 17 cases of CJD contracted in the UK (3 were
> reported in the USA) All but one, at that time had died.  There were
> reportedly 200 other court cases pending at that time. This would
> suggest that,  quite conservatively, the number of CJD cases among
> "young people" in 1996 was substantially greater than the  143, 145, 147
> or 150 cases of vCJD diagnosed over the last 20 years purportedly from
> "eating beef"
>
> I do not ever recall reading newspaper articles or hearing warnings
> about the safety of hormone treatments, or the safety of medical
> treatments, although I do recall reading a highly intellectual non
> specific article in the New York Review of Books by Ivan Illich on
> iatrogenic (medically induced) illnesses. Doesn't it appear more
> reasonable to assume that the current human cases are connected with the
> mecical-industrial-stock market complex?
>
> It would not seem to be in the interest of the medical profession to
> warn the public that they are in great danger when in a doctor's office
> or in a hospital, although it is common to be warned about eating too
> much and eating fast food or eating and drinking/
>
> When reading "sporadic" or "spontaneous" one should keep in mind that
> both words mean "Doctors don't know what caused this"
>
> It seems to me that with virus, viral particles and abstractions named
> "prions" we are on the margin between "life' and "inanimate matter", a
> prime subject for long term, basic research probably impossible due to
> public hysteria.
>
> For my part I am astounded, humbled and fearful whenever I think of the
> uproar over "mad cow" and the quiet acceptance of the progressive
> militarization of our global society, especially in my own country.
>
don't worry, UK experience shows that the population at large, after a year
or two during which they realise that the predictions of the lunatic fringe
are nonsense and see things in proper perspective, just go back to beef.

The bizarre predictions of people like Pearl actually end up helping the
beef market because they are so obviously wrong

Jim Webster

Torsten Brinch wrote:

> On 8 Jan 2004 12:43:46 -0800, banmilk@hotmail.com (Ron) wrote:
> 
>>Could Mad Cow Disease Already Be Killing Thousands Of Americans Every
>>Year?
> 
> Could that possibility be in the same likelihood bracket as Could
> Americans have Killed Hundreds of Thousands Iraqis last year?

could that possibility be in the same likelihood bracket as keeping the
thread on topic and will we soon be referring to mad cows as meat
terrorists?