Apparently, these entities-- prions-- have been around for a long
time, but it has been masked by a couple unrelated things. One: The
lifespan of most humans only a few generations ago was quite a
bit shorter than it is now, so the long "incubation" (which isn't really
incubation, but rather a cumulative process that only manifests noticeable
symptoms near the end stage) was rarely ever finished. And Two: the
interspecies tinkering humans have been doing with animal breeding and animal
feed production. There may be other causative factors as well (things like
pesticide residue, pollution, genetic modification using viral or retroviral
vectors, even ozone depletion and concomittant solar radiation affecting
prion mutations, etc) that have caused prions to become the
pathogenic threat they are right now.
The main contributing factor that my research has
turned up is the factory farming mentality and practices that have come into
common use within the past 50 years: Using animal carcasses to
create feed for the same species or similar species of animals. This
has been the main form of transmission to date. You would think that US
agribusiness would have learned more from the experiences in the UK over the
past ten years. Sadly, the only law to come out of that was to forbid the use
of mamalian derived food additives in "Ruminate Animals" (animals that chew
their cud). That means it's still perfectly legal to make dead cow into feed
for pigs. What's more, there are poorly enforced testing procedures AND
follow-up with the "Rendering Industry" (Abbatoirs) that takes slaughterhouse
refuse or offal and turns it into animal feed and other products like gelatine
or cosmetic industry ingredients, etc.
There is a lot of slip 'twixt cup and lip, in this whole supply
chain. Feed for ruminative animals is made with the same machinery as
dead-cow-proccessed feed in some plants-- and when I researched the
medical precautions of how to sterilize equipment in human surgical settings--
they said the only safe thing to do is to discard surgical instruments used on
infected people! The next best alternative is to soak the instruments in
hydrochloric (or was it sulfuric?) acid for an hour, rinse, and then
autoclave-- and that doesn't guarantee prions haven't remained that keep their
infectious ability. So they only advise the use of that procedure on equipment
that was NOT used in brain surgery, spinal surgery, eye surgery, or certain
other high-risk types. I really don't understand how prions can survive all
that, but this advice (from the World Health Organization) raises my
goosebumps! I think it's a safe bet that rendering plants don't do any of the
above sterilizing of their equipment.
Variants of mad cow disease have now been confirmed in cats,
mink, mice, macaque monkeys, chimpanzees, cows, sheep, and I'm not sure how
many other species, besides humans. There was a report of ostriches with a
confirmed brain wasting disease in a zoo in Germany! There were studies done
on certain types of parasitic flies that lay eggs in living or dead flesh that
proved that ingestion of the flies larva can transmit prion infection. I don't
know if other exposure to these flies, as in being bitten by an adult,
can transmit infection, but I do know that there is an unavoidable
level of insect contamination in any processed food. There were studies
that proved that prions in placental material from infected female animals
that have given birth remains active in the pasture for a number of
years. What the implications of that are for grazing animals, I don't
know. But the whole situation is cause for some serious alarm.
Potential solutions in the short term for your average citizen:
Eat only organically grown foods-- and meats raised using only organically
grown feed of the correct type for that animal's
evolution! The highest risk foods are organ meats and
processed meats from cows (and I should think sheep, as well), especially
animals that were over two years old. Dairy foods are not supposed to be
infectious, and muscle tissue is not high risk, unless it has the bones in or
was processed with great stupidity.
Mind you, this doesn't address the threat that is carried in the
fact that animals like cows are used to generate many common vaccines, which
is an area of research I skimmed over, but merits more detailed review, I
suppose. All my kids have already been vaccinated for everything, so I'm not
sure that it's worth it to scare myself now.
I have to say, I am very disappointed in the behavior of
agribusiness in general. If this is what they do when unregulated, then
something seriously needs to change. I'm researching organic internet sources
for meat and other foods. Anyone who's interested, email me off list and I'll
share my results with you.
Judith
----- Original Message -----
From: "James N Rose" <***>
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2003 12:01 PM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Prion research and mad cow
disease
>
> from your depiction ...
these effectively are 'magic bullets',
> impervious and dangerous once
in the open environment. Biological
> versions of
bucky-balls.
>
> If they are truly biologic-primitives on the
scale you describe,
> then they should have been present in the natural
environment
> long before now. Either they were, and natural
biology once
> upon a time found a way of dealing with them, or ...,
their
> appearance required special atypical and contrived
conditions
> to form them.
>
> James
>
122703