January 07, 2004 - 5:57 p.m.
In case you were wondering
I'm sure everyone reading this may have already looked up the info for themselves, but in case not, here's the scoop on MAD COW shitz:
It is now considered an "incontestable fact" that these human deaths in Britain were caused by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), or Mad Cow disease. 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 at temperatures hot enough to melt lead. 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.
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. Scientists called this new form of the disease "variant" CJD.
Hundreds of confirmed cases of the sporadic form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, however, arise in the United States every year, 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. 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.
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."
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--and hundreds of thousands of downer pigs, too sick or crippled by injury to even walk, arrive at U.S. slaughterhouses every year. 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).
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."
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). 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.
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.
The incubation period for human spongiform encephalopathies such as CJD can be decades.
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."
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? Or Alison Harrison, former director of public relations for the Cattlemen's Association, as her official spokeswoman? 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"? 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, millions of Americans will remain at risk.
To read all of the details go here:
http://organicconsumers.org/madcow/GregerCJD.cfm
I think I picked a bad time to stop being a vegetarian...
January 06, 2004 - 9:22 p.m.
there's alphabet cereal - where's the number cereal?
I really am a math geek. I just spent, I dunno, a half an hour calculating the exact balances of my credit cards based on interest and payments for the next year. The good news is that I will definitely have them payed off by 2005. And, if I stick to my plan, my car keeps running, and I don't lose or quit my job, I will have enough money to buy myself a G5 with a HUGE screen next Christmas. MMM, YAY.
This year passed by so quickly that I'm already excited.
