vCJD and it's link to BSE

[grassfarmer]

Realising that this is treading old ground and probably won't factor in the current political games we are playing over BSE I was interested to read an article written in the US on May 27th arguing how safe Canadian beef is. Check it out at:
"www.cato.org/research/articles/milloy-030527.html"

[kato]

Good article. Maybe the guys over on Agweb should read it.

For that matter, maybe it should be re-published in the National Post.

[rsomer]

The article did make mention of "kuru" or the laughing death. "Laughing death," locally called kuru, was a progressive, fatal brain malady that robbed its victims of the ability to walk, talk, and even eat. It had killed dozens of the highland Fore people as a result of their cannabalism. In 1976, Carleton Gajdusek shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work which demonstrated that kuru was transmissable between species, humans and chimpanzees. http://whyfiles.org/012mad_cow/6.html
While kuru is not BSE I think the food safety measures Canada and other countries are taking are justified. Testing, removal of SRMs, bans on feeding ruminant protein are reasonable responses. Banning trade in beef is not however. Hopefully in the future it will be demonstated that BSE was another Y2K. But in the meantime better safe than sorry.

[pandiana]

It is amazing to see such a contrast between two supposedly credible sources. See also:http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/cjd/cjd_fact_sheet.htm

[pandiana]

If I remember correctly, kuru was transmissible to sons in particular because it was thought that offspring could inherit the wisdom of their fathers by eating their brain when they had died. Hence, the strong suggestion that prions could be infectious if consumed.

[grassfarmer]

Pandiana, as you say the contrast between the articles is considerable. The oft mentioned fact that two of the vCJD victims in the UK were long time vegetarians has yet to be explained.
I believe the British Medical Journal article mentioned in my link also highlighted the interesting story of a cluster of three villages in rural SW England in the heart of the of the worst area for BSE. They have a long standing local tradition of eating
"head cheese" - brain material from cattle yet no one in that area has ever contracted vCJD.
When Mark Purdie showed the geographic location cases of vCJD they were indeed in clusters - not in rural areas but near certain industrialised areas that contained certain types of chemical plants(often ones with a history of toxic spills)and clusters of the disease were also found under the flightpaths of most of the major airports. Interesting - but not to the politicians apparently.

[pandiana]

The following link leads to a very good background article,with lots of references, on the history of CVJ and its pathology. It's too bad it is not that current.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol3no2/ricketts.htm