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I certainly agree
it should not be recklessly spread. That's why I called the agribusiness methods
"stupid". I did not intend to insinuate that a "natural" cause meant
we could be lackadaisical about it. :)
My concern is
that correcting these agribiz methods may be inadequate. In the western US,
prion disease is a serious threat to deer populations, and even culling huge
wild herds may not be adequate:
If we take
these wild deer across these several states as a model, then even reducing
the rate of transmission down to a more natural capacity may be not enough,
particularly for large numbers of domesticated animals in close proximity. In
the short run, it is probably all we can hope to do, barring some major
breakthrough in understanding the causal roots of these things.
Regards,
Tim
Just because something is "natural", that doesn't mean it should
be recklessly spread by artificial means throughout the food chain.
Eliminating the poorly thought out (to say the
least!)agribusiness mechanisms by which this spread is occurring will
reduce the pathogenic activity of prions back down to something approaching
their natural capacity, rather than magnifying their ability to cause disease
through the distribution network our technologies have created. This issue is
not about eliminating prions altogether, it is about common
sense.
Judith
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2003 1:37
PM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] Prion research and
mad cow disease
If misfolded
proteins are not the root cause, but are rather induced by viral or other
such agents, then - similarly -
until such time as they can be identified and countermeasures (e.g.,
vaccines) created, it would seem these diseases will continue to occur from
time to time, despite our
best efforts at reducing spreading diseased animal tissue back into the food
cycle.
So, while I agree that it is stupid for
agribusiness to feed potentially infected animals back into the feed cycle,
eliminating this may eliminate or reduce epidemics but will likely not end
the problem altogether.
Although these PrPSc prions pose dangers, maybe as
we learn more about them they will tell us more about the protein-folding
problem?
Regards,
Tim
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
>
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