slightly off-topic: mad cow disease

["Jon Campbell" <jon@cqs.com>]

Hi, folks,

       I usually hold back from sending off-topic mail to the environmental
listservs to which I subscribe, but I believe this topic is worthy of all of
our attention. In Rachel's Environment & Health News #607, Peter Montague
outlines the technical details of what appears to be a problem of epidemic
proportions:

1. That we apparently have a variant of Mad Cow Disease in the US. It
appears that some or all of the hundreds of thousands of cows and calves
referred to as "downers" - those that fall down and die for no apparent
reason - are infected with a Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) - a
disease that turns their brains into mush.

2. These "downers" have been "rendered" into cattle feed until 1997, and
their remains are still used for pigs, chickens, and other animals. The
remains of these animals are still used for cattle feed. Thus the FDA rule
to prevent the spread of BSE just made it slightly more indirect.

3. A significant fraction (5% to 13%, according to small studies) of the
people diagnosed as having Alzheimer's Disease likely actually have new
variant Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (nvCJD) which does the same thing to human
brains as BSE does to cows' brains. People diagnosed as having "early
Alzheimer's" may be the tragic victims of an industry and regulators gone
haywire. There may be as many as hundreds of thousands of cases of  nvCJD in
the US. The FDA knew over a decade ago about "downers" and the fact that
whatever the cows had was transmissible to other animals (notably mink).

Taken together, we have a bad situation, any way you cut it. To protect our
health and especially the health of our children requires massive publicity
to show the danger and show alternatives.

See www.cqs.com/madcow.htm

Please copy it and cross-post it or its URL to other mail-lists.

Thanks,
Jon Campbell
www.cqs.com