Human mad cow epidemic 'could be bigger than feared'

[NorthernSun]

Far more people in the UK could be infected with the human form of mad cow disease than originally estimated, scientists warned today.

The true prevalence of the condition might not become apparent for decades because variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) probably has a much longer incubation period than originally thought, the researchers said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/bse/article/0,,1804539,00.html

[havocmom]

1. Prolly in the US too

Would explain a lot, actually

Isn't there some similar problem infecting deer in parts of North America?

[Warpy]

4. Wasting disease in western elk herds

has been called epidemic, and yes, it's pretty much the same disease.

[havocmom]

13. While we have seen deer & elk licking on bones in the wild

we wonder about how else this might be transmitted. Havocdad really believes most of what 'bugs' us will be found in soils. The more we spread out and disturb previously little disrupted soils, the more trouble we borrow.

Look to prairie dogs for illustration. Colonies grow and expand until a plague wipes most of it out. Before plague hits, the increasing population requires that new burrows have to be dug out. So, along with the rising population, there is all that new dirt turned up.

:shrug: Researchers finding more and more conditions seem to be viral in origin, like even many heart disease and uterine cancer. Who knows, maybe Havocdad is onto something with his observations of wild critters over a lifetime.

[Warpy]

17. Certainly prions from carrion might contaminate the surface of grass

but predators are pretty efficient at stripping everything useful from bones. If the big predators don't get it all, the bacteria will finish it off. We don't see prion diseases in these creatures because their lifespans are too short for it to develop.

CJD is generally thought of as a blood and body fluid borne disease, possibly transmitted through saliva as well as other body fluids, but only in the later stages.

The fact is that we don't know how wasting disease is transmitted in elk or scrapie in sheep. We do know that feeding cattle animal products from slaughtered sheep with scrapie is what started the outbreak in the UK.

It may be one of those calculated risks for anybody who eats meat. It's a very slow disease, often taking decades to appear. The outbreak in Britain was remarkable because the disease appeared in years instead of decades, possibly indicating repeated exposure to high levels of contamination.

I'll be sticking to Quorn patties and Boca burgers for the foreseeable future. If I haven't got it, I don't want it. I've see three cases of CJD, and it's especially horrible for friends and family to have to watch.

[Vanje]

35. Scrapie and BSE

Warpy said:
CJD is generally thought of as a blood and body fluid borne disease, possibly transmitted through saliva as well as other body fluids, but only in the later stages.

Sheeptramp sez:
In the facility where I work tending a scrapie-positive flock of sheep for a team of prion researchers,observing scrapie as a model for te beavior of BSE . We see NO transmission of prion trough saliva or other body fluids, with the exception of natural transmission of the prion from amniotic fluids.

Warpy said:
The fact is that we don't know how wasting disease is transmitted in elk or scrapie in sheep. We do know that feeding cattle animal products from slaughtered sheep with scrapie is what started the outbreak in the UK.

Seeptramp sez:

Prion researchers dropped that theory a long while back. Mice injected with scrapie prion from sheep and with BSE prion from cattle showed different incubation rates and symptoms.
New theories about the origin of British BSE outbreak include pretty good (and disusting!)argument for a possible human source. (Maybe they should refer to BSE as Variant CJD, instead of the reverse.)

Scrapie prion is a tremendous problem for sheep, but is probably not dangerous to humans. Scrapie has been endemic in the British Isles for centuries. People have been entusiastically eating sheep there since befor the stone age. It dosnt seem to be source for TSE disease in mutton eating peoples.
There is even a theory that the British mad cow outbreak wouldve affected far more people , but that eating scrapie-tainted mutton may have given some protection, like immunization, from the more virulent BSE prion.

[Ghost Dog]

20. Speaking as a (one-time, and still, yeah, academic) ecologist, havocmom,

I have absolutely no doubt that some kind of 'plague' will soom wipe out most of the human species (if we don't do it to ourselves, through the medium of war and such).

That's nature (protecting, growing, becoming herself) for you and, though of course it hurts, no doubt a good thing too (unless we collectively become, very quickly, very inspired to solve/resolve a hell of a lot of very pressing problems/issues...).

[alfredo]

28. Some civilizations died from environmental degradation.

They play out the soil, kill the game, drain all the water. They pack up and leave. Six Billion people may soon need to find a new place to live. One problem.......

[Ghost Dog]

41. Yeah, We were little more than 3 thousand million

when I started to seriously study these issues, some 35 years ago...

[alfredo]

42. it may sound heartless but we do need a plague to cull our herd.

[et in Arcadia ego]

6. Yes

It's called 'Chronic Wasting Disease'..

http://www.cwd-info.org/index.php/fuseaction/about.main

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a transmissible neurological disease of deer and elk that produces small lesions in brains of infected animals. It is characterized by loss of body condition, behavioral abnormalities and death. CWD is classified as a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), and is similar to mad cow disease in cattle and scrapie in sheep.

Infectious agents of CWD are neither bacteria nor viruses, but are hypothesized to be prions. Prions are infectious proteins without associated nucleic acids.

Although CWD is a contagious fatal disease among deer and elk, research suggests that humans, cattle and other domestic livestock are resistant to natural transmission. While the possibility of human infection remains a concern, it is important to note there have been no verified cases of humans contracting CWD.

CWD can reduce the growth and size of wild deer and elk populations in areas where the prevalence is high, and is of increasing concern for wildlife managers across North America. The disease was long thought to be limited in the wild to a relatively small endemic area in northeastern Colorado, southeastern Wyoming and southwestern Nebraska, but has recently been found in several new areas across the North American continent. The disease also has been diagnosed in commercial game farms in several states and provinces.

[Kellanved]

2. In other news: hot weather and the world cup caused a slow news month

Geez. Every summer it's mad cow again.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

3. I LOVE the Mad Cow scares!

Helps lower the cost of beef so I can afford it a few times a week. :)

[bettyellen]

5. incubation period of 50 years?

[Ghost Dog]

7. Any possible connection with what is known as 'Alzeimer's'?

(Increasingly prevalent, for some reason; and no, it's not just about aging populations).

[SmokingJacket]

8. I've been wondering that for a while.

They rarely autopsy Alzheimer's patients to check that it was really Alzheimers -- after all, they're usually pretty old anyway.

[DURHAM D]

9. Good question Ghost Dog. I read somewhere that they are

studying pockets where an unusually high number of people got early onset Alzheimers - and it could be related to mad cow/wasting diseases.

[Ghost Dog]

19. Uh huh. That's what I've been (vaguely) hearing

over here in Europe, too. Provides some food for thought.

(I'm a Brit, by the way, some 20 years now living in Spain). I noticed the (original) British political/administration reaction to this problem: (denial, attempted cover-up, economic excuses, then finally fairly correct action, it seems, coupled with a certain degree, I feel sure, of dishonesty) - but I definitely get the impression that 1). they caught it late, very late; 2). even in the UK the present controls are weak, dodgy, insufficient (but probably better than in most places); 3). the (poorly-funded) science is only beginning to catch up; and 4). their (the politicos/admins') instinct is still to cover up, hide the damage (mustn't let the people panic)...

Here in Spain, by contrast, the truth is probably a lot worse, the cover-up even more profound (and the testing/response even more suspect)... Not to mention the uncontrolled illegal imports...

...And it is indeed somewhat unsettling to observe the way that the USA, like Spain, refuses even to properly test, just for a start, and is much more interested in (for political, economic & social reasons) media "spin control".

--> And, I've raised the subject here as someone intimately involved in attempting to care for a person suffering from what is known/labelled as "Alzheimer's Disease" (btw, with apologies for my occasional haste and bunged-up keyboard).

Bottom line: Perhaps indeed this 'media-friendly' label "Alzheimer's Disease" may be a 'catch-all' that is to this day covering a serious problem and a multitud of sins.

[Sal Minella]

11. I thought Alzheimers is caused by neural "tangles" and plaque

formation, and Spongiform Encephalopathy is precipitated by prions causing disintigration of areas in the brain? Just bloviating here.

[amandabeech]

12. I read that vCJD could mimic Alzheimer's.

The article stated that as many as 20% of Alzheimer's patients might have vCJD in areas where the prion had been found.

The EU has banned feeding protein meal, the end product of rendering, to animals. Here in the U.S., a ban was considered by not put into force. The least we could do is ban the feeding of ruminant protein meal (ruminants are cattle, sheep, goats, elk, deer)to other ruminants.

Another method of stopping mad cow would be to test each animal. Currently, the Feds have ruled it illegal to do so. That's why it has taken so much effort to get the Japanese to accept our beef. To me, the prohibition against individual testing smells like the smoke where there's fire.

[hpot]

14. Independent Testing Question

Would it be illegal for someone to buy meat from random grocery stores and get the samples tested?

[amandabeech]

25. That's an interesting question

to which I have no answer.

[Vanje]

36. The tissues that are tested for TSEs arent usually what most folks would

be likely to put in their shopping basket, at least for now.

Current tests use certain specific lymp nodes and brain tissues. Unless you eat brainstem, rectal-mucosa junctions, or mesenteric nodes , your consumer meat would be unlikely to have the prion concentrations needed for the test , even in an animal with advanced prion disease.

There is a test being developed for blood.

[Barrett808]

27. I read a paper by Prusiner in the NEJM

Iirc...he basically listed a number of degenerative neurological conditions that are caused by prions of various sorts. I think Alzheimer's was one.

[dipsydoodle]

10. Same time scale as Salk Polio Vaccine then.

Never seemed to affect the parents, who had the polio vaccine in the '50s too much but was apparently passed onto their children and their chilldren.......... The vaccine contained what was to become known as the SV40 virus which causes tumours etc So - 50 years sounds about right in the context of this thread with regard to vCJd.

http://www.sv40foundation.org/CPV-link.html

There are many other similar links. Salk vaccine was also deliberately dumped into the African market in the knowledge that it was flawed with live simian virus.

Edit : Found a better link : http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/07/15/MN193825.DTL

[Hestia]

22. Wow - Had no idea of SV40 & Tumors - thank you for the link!

[Radio_Lady]

29. That's a fascinating piece, but it's from 2001. Is there anything else

to hang one's hat on in the intervening years?

Thanks for the post.

In peace,

Radio_Lady

[dipsydoodle]

33. The links from 2001 and 2003

were just to demonstrate that it wasn't a new subject. There is more on the issue in this link: http://www.vaccines.plus.com/B-EDDY-AND-TUSKAGEE.html and another from Australia :
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/22/1098316860457.html?oneclick=true

The more you search Salk vaccine, flawed batches etc the more you will find.

[w4rma]

15. Eat beef and gamble with slowly dying of "Alzheimers". (nt)

[shadowknows69]

16. No thanks

My wife and I stopped gambling with the beef industry 3 years ago. God I miss tacos.

[Megahurtz]

18. Make Soymeat Tacos.

Or other non-meat alternatives for tacos.
I've eaten them and they taste pretty good, some can taste just like meat and they're satisfying.:9

[PylesMalfunction]

23. Or

You could buy your meat from a local farmer you know. I get any meat from a gentleman that gives his animal plenty of pasture and room. The animals are grass fed and are never given antibiotics or hormones. They're also slaughtered humanely.

[Ghost Dog]

26. That's right n/t

[sweetheart]

21. They're effin' all over the place

Goddam mad cows are taking over political parties, even, its breathtaking. Like when the
brains start to degenerate, they become republicans and start wars.

The mad cow plague of 2000, that's what historians will call it, and all this time we thougt
it was big corporations! ;-)

[conflictgirl]

24. I am convinced that it's much worse everywhere than officials say

Since I write for the natural food industry, I research anything related to that topic and keep up with the news. Based on everything I've seen, I am pretty convinced that mad cow is much worse than the official reports say, and that it's being misdiagnosed or mislabeled in the US.

I don't eat anything made from mass-produced beef. Some people's fears are way overblown (ie bird flu) but I don't think mad cow is such a case.

[Eurobabe]

34. Totally agree with you, I switched to organic meat and dairy

about 3 years ago. Of course, that does not "cleanse" the 35 or so years of eating tainted beef before the switch. Look for Mad Cow to come rolling into my house in about 15 years. :mad:

At least I am someplace now that they test every HEAD of cattle, instead of the one in a gazillion in the USA.

[Vanje]

37. Im inclined to agree.

Recent BSE-pos cows reported from Texas and Alabama caused lots of inquiry as to where they came from and what theyd been fed.
These are good questions to be sure, but Id also be very interested in where their calves have got to.
A Prion-pos ewe will transmit the disease to about half of her lambs by way of its ingestion of birthing fluids.
There is no reason to assume that a BSE-pos cow wouldnt transmit her prions to her offspring similarly.


I dont eat anyting I dont personally know.

[KaryninMiami]

30. Here's an idea to avoid the mad cow epidemic -- STOP EATING COWS

And start demanding that conventional farmers stop the rampant use of pesticides or use a strong chemical wash (found in healthfood stores) or buy organic.

I did- many years ago and guess what-- no risk of mad cow disease and Boca Burgers and veggie meat products aren't all horrible- some in fact, are quite good. Plus, if we eat less meat, we can grow far more food (and feed far more people), eliminate mad cow disease, lower cholesterol and get this-- people would be healthier (not to mention the cows!).

[donsu]

31. kick

nt

[Coventina]

32. word.

The solution is simple: If cows are bad for you, don't eat them.

I quit eating cows the day I read my first "mad cow" article in "In These Times".

Never regretted it. Never missed it.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

38. I think more have died from Mad Cowboy disease.

At least 2500 americans, anyway.

[stepnw1f]

39. Fear, Fear, Fear.....

actually, mad cow would explain the reason so many voted for Mr. Dipshit George.

[rolleitreks]

40. Sounds like a crock to me.

I lived in the UK from '87-89 and thus cannot donate blood in NY.

At first scientists warned of a twenty-year incubation period.

Oops, no new cases.

So now it's fifty.

I'm worried.

Not.