"If an evil force could devise an agent capable of damaging the human race, he would make it indestructible, distribute it as widely as possible in animal feed so that it would pass to man, and program it to cause disease slowly so that everyone would have been exposed to it before there was any awareness of its presence," observed British microbiologist Richard Lacy, a leading critic of his government's policies for dealing with BSE.
"The issue of BSE is like the issue of nuclear power stations," a British medical advisor had opined in 1990. In both cases most people with expert knowledge believe the risk is very low. But if things go wrong, the result would be catastrophic."
The transmissible spongiform encephelopathies ate very different from AIDS, but they share two characteristics that prompted observers to draw frightening parallels. In the first place, both were considered virtually 100% fatal. In the second place, both had an incredibly long incubation period. The known human TSEs seemed to take an average of approximately 12 years to kills their victims. This parallel was noted by Luc Montagnier, the French scientist who first discovered the infectious agent that causes AIDS. At the time of his discovery in 1983, France had only seen a total of 200 cases. "I did not realize the epidemic could spread so fast and so widely in the world,' Montagnier recalled. He warned that the handful of early human victims from mad cow disease could be the harbinger of a much larger epidemic..... In facts the TSEs differed with AIDS in one respect that made predictions even more difficult. At least with AIDS, you could test someone early on to see if they were infected. With the TSEs, however, there were no tests capable of detecting the infectious agent during the long incubation period before symptoms started showing.
Mad Cow USA - Could the Nightmare Happen here? Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber - Common Courage Press, 1997. Copyright, 1997 by the Center for Media and Democracy.
>From: Brian Siano <siano at mail.med.upenn.edu>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] It destroys your brain...
>Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 15:28:07 -0500
>
>Jon Johanning wrote:
>
>>The bottom line, I think, is that even in GB, the incidence of CJ disease
>>has been very slight. It is much more likely that any given member of this
>>list will be killed by a heart attack, stroke, cancer, or any of those
>>boring old-fashioned conditions, whether they eat beef or not.
>>
>>I think the popular fascination with CJ disease has two causes: the
>>thought of one's brain having holes eaten into it is peculiarly horrible,
>>and lots of people want to feel that if they can't keep themselves from
>>dying from something or other, they can at least renounce beef-eating and
>>take care of that particular danger, however remote it may be.
>>
>>(All that said, there is certainly lots of room for improvement in the
>>whole food hygiene system, particularly in the US).
>
>This last part is definitely true, at least as far as I'm concerned. I love
>meat; the idea of spending the rest of my life without steaks, ribs, or
>roast chicken is about as appealing as a life without reading. The fact
>that the U.S. beef industry has such shoddy health standards is
>infuriating... and now that Mad Cow Disease has reared its quaking
>cavity-ridden head, the time for reform is way, way overdue.
>
>I gues I'll have to start buying from farms which do free-range and
>grain-fed systems. Expensive, but a really nicely seasoned rack of ribs is
>worth it.
>
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