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