Could mad cow disease already be afflicting thousands of Americans?

[peace4all]

THE KILLER AMONG US
Michael Greger, AlterNet

Could mad cow disease already be afflicting thousands of Americans? With the symptoms so closely resembling Alzheimer's, the true toll may not yet be known.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17513

[JailForBush]

1. Alzheimers?

Are you suggesting that Ronald Reagan has mad cow disease?

[KamaAina]

22. Actually, I'd be worried about the *current* WH occupant

He sure must've barbecued a lot of beef on those month-long vacations in Crawford...

[catzies]

34. If he had a brain-wasting disease, who could tell?

Thank you Dorothy Parker.

[mhr]

2. Yes - Free Book Here

http://www.prwatch.org/books/madcow.html

[Kathy in Cambridge]

3. BBC had a Program on This The Other Night

Here is a link to a program I listened to last night about mad cow disease. This guy has been on the BBC and on Oprah talking about it. The last part will interest DU pet owners(what this country puts in it's dog and cat food--even the premium brands!)

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2004/01/07.html#recap

[devinsgram]

4. Could this be the reason most of Americans

have such short term memories?

[LeahMira]

19. I doubt it...

Could this be the reason most of Americans...
have such short term memories?

No. I don't think so. But I do think that additives and preservatives in the food we eat as well as some of the poisons in the air we breathe have a lot to do with the ADHD that we're seeing in so many kids and young adults.

I also think that Americans have not valued the idea of remembering. There are indigenous groups who can tell their people's history for hundreds of years back and we find that when our "experts" research these histories, the people who remember have the details down perfectly. These oral histories are passed from generation to generation and remembered. We "civilized" folks have writing and books and such, so we think that we don't have to bother committing things to memory. Of course history tends to be written by the powerful, and we know how much truth they generally remember for us.

If Americans have such short term memories, it's because that's all that has been asked or required of them. Those who do remember the non-official versions have a hard time being heard because "the book" says something different.

End of rant.

[goforit]

29. ADHD could be due to many of the teratogens you mentioned, but

doesn't ADHD cases occur with parents who smoked
ciggarrets or are around heavy smokers that cause them to inhale smoke secound hand?

Now ofcourse they would never print a story like this much less
do the research on this.

What a woman does during pregnancy is very important and will
effect the offspring.

Prime example:........
If I am not mistaken,
Barbara Bush smoked and drank during George W's embryotic developement. Tobacco and alcohol were not known to cause
birthdefects or mild handicaps at that time and many women
abused these teratogens.

Madcow?.........OMG!!!
I wounder if they have any studies of CJD affecting the pregnant
mother's offspring?

[meow2u3]

5. I don't know about Mad Cow....

but we sure as hell have a mad bull (shit) in the White House! :evilgrin:

[maggrwaggr]

6. gee, that would explain SO much......

A nation of Mad Cow/Humans.

Especially in the midwest and south .....

Pass that bar-b-que!

[Loonman]

7. Would frogs with wings bump their

butts ahoppin?

Don't know.

[cprise]

8. Here is another one (quite detailed)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=3950

[Bozola]

9. It will be renamed....FRS

Free Republic Syndrome.

I always knew those idjits had "fat cow" disease...

[ret5hd]

10. yeah, i think those afflicted call themselves republicans. (nt)

[laruemtt]

11. and dittoheads.

[papau]

12. 86 of 97 in mad cow heard can not be traced - do we care?

86 of 97 in mad cow heard can not be traced - do we care?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60331-2004Jan6.html

DNA Tests Trace Infected Holstein to Canada By Shankar Vedantam and Deneen L. BrownWashington Post Staff WritersWednesday, January 7, 2004; Page A08 DNA tests prove that a Washington state Holstein cow found infected with mad cow disease was born and likely infected in Canada, U.S. and Canadian government officials said yesterday. Tracking the first case of mad cow disease detected in the United States to a farm in the province of Alberta solves a thorny problem for investigators -- it points to a potential source of infection and suggests that U.S. safety regulations may have successfully prevented the transmission of the dreaded disease within this country. But the results also deepened the mystery of how the disease might have spread in North America, and raised fears that other animals may have become infected and entered the food supply. For example, 97 cattle were sent to the United States starting in August 2001 from the same Alberta herd as the infected Holstein. Officials do not know where 86 of the animals are. <snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60265-2004Jan6.html

COMMENT:Seems we can't even remove herd from food chain - will media say anything? I doubt we will see any comment on 6 O'Clock News! And these are what we caught out after not testing 500,000 annual downer - can't walk - cows that the rest of the world removes from the food chain.God forbid we have a cow ID system - or add 2 cents per pound to meat cost to have same day test results of all beef.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=999296

[IrateCitizen]

13. Eric Schlosser discussed this in "Fast Food Nation"

The very REAL possibilities aren't that pretty. For one, there really isn't much known about the human manifestation of Mad Cow disease, called Creutzfeld-Jacob Disorder, or CJD. In any event, the disease is 100% fatal. But doctors have no idea of how quickly the disorder manifests itself -- it could be within months of eating Mad Cow beef, it could be years. We could be facing a real epidemic of it, and not even realize it for 5 or 10 years from now.

[SpiralHawk]

14. Eat clean food

Eat organic.

Know -- and support -- your local organic farmers.

[sybylla]

15. Of Course

But there is still so much we don't know about how the prions spread or are shared. We don't know at what stage of the disease an animal is safe to consume. Heck, I don't think we entirely know what parts of an animal are safe to consume at any stage of Mad Cow. Perhaps our current meat handling laws will prevent contamination. Perhaps there is very little of the disease here.

The difficulty is that all of the prion based diseases have such a long incubation period, it will take years of research to answer basic questions. This is why Mad Cow wasn't taken as a serious health risk in the UK until their population began to be affected by it 10 years later. That leaves us with the alternative of absolute prevention. Which will mean developing reliable testing methods that will catch the disease in its earliest stages as well as tracking of the carcass.

The majority of the beef consumed in this country is slaughtered between the ages of 1.5 years and 3 years of age. That is not long enough to manifest signs of a disease like the downed dairy cow in Washington. Combine that with the fact that less than 50,000 head of cattle butchered have been tested out of the millions slaughtered every year since the misadminstration got into office, the beef industry has been able to claim that their animals are 100% free of Mad Cow. In fact, unless an animal was showing signs of disease they wouldn't have been tested at all. That is how the system has worked for decades. And that means we may have been consuming beef from animals infected with Mad Cow for a very long time.

Does that mean in 5-10 years there will be hundreds of cases of CJD, the human variant of Mad Cow? I doubt it. But who wants to be a guinea pig? Rather than spend the next decade worrying, lets get the testing and monitoring system fixed and out of the hands of the beef lobby now.


On Edit: For more information I would also recommend the book, Mad Cow USA by John Nichols. An excellent book on the subject published 2-3 years ago discussing the beef industry, the possiblity of Mad Cow in the US and predicting exactly what has happened in Washington.

[lapislzi]

23. Good advice--don't eat your own

Prions are implicated in diseases found among cannibal groups in Papua-New Guinea, especially the ones who consume brains.

Ruminants who eat other ruminants become ill with prion illnesses.

Is it obvious, or is it me? Don't eat your own kind!

[denverbill]

25. Another unknown.

How do we know that every beefeater in America isn't already infected? Since so little is known about CJD, maybe it isn't so much the presence of prions that causes CJD, but the individual's response to them.

For example, maybe 2 people can suffer an identical infection from prions. 10 years later, one person suffers from acute CJD, the other person is perfectly normal. 20 years after that, perhaps the 'normal' person begin to slowly exhibit signs of CJD, rather than the rapid onset experienced by the first person.

[goforit]

31. Well, They will have to develope a genetic/biologic test that can

determine whether normal people are primed for "madcow".

Especially all carnivors!!!

[loudsue]

16. I'm SO sick of the terrorists running our government

They are killing Americans every single day, whether by keeping our seniors from getting the meds they need, letting our soldiers die every day in Iraq, or letting food into the supermarkets that is literally killing us and our loved ones.

And all they have to say is "LOOK over there! It's the brown-skinned people blowing up our buildings!"

We need to get our entire system of government back into the hands of the people and OUT of the hands of the greedy corporatists. This time when we have a cultural revolution, like we started in the '60's, we need to purge the system all the way through.

Last time, once some things started getting straightened out, we quit fighting before the job was done.

This time, we have to REMAIN vigilant....forever....and educate our "left behind" kids on every aspect of how this insidious problem can recur if left to the monied interests.

:kick:

[info being]

26. One of the things we have to do is donate money to politicians

He who pays the piper calls the tune. Dean and Kucinich couldn't exist if it weren't for our money...they'd have to pander to corporations.

[sendero]

17. Nobody knows the numbers...

... but there is little doubt that many, many people have been exposed to the prions that cause mad cow. It's a matter of time before we know the real damage.

[KFC]

18. Americans are so easily scared

That is why hacks write scare pieces

[Ms. Clio]

21. Yeah, we're all just a bunch of nervous nellies

Ever read the classic work The Jungle? I am sure glad that hack scare piece galvanized the public and the government into demanding safe food back in the day. Would it be so dreadful if these current concerns led to increased testing of cattle for this disease that is 100% fatal--you know, like rabies?

[leftchick]

20. I beleive once the CJD symptoms appear

Life expectency is very short. Less than a year. Alzheimers symptoms can last for many years. Ronny is still hanging in there! So I doubt there is a connection.

[lapislzi]

30. Prions implicated in both conditions

The trouble is, we just don't know that much about prions (other than the fact that they destroy your brain and are virtually indestructible). There could be a connection at some level.

[govegan]

24. Mad cows in a world gone mad

If this crisis inspires no one to probe beyond the financial health of a rapacious industry, we are afflicted with a sickness more malevolent than Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Listening to unabashed market analysis that dwarfs matters of human health and animal suffering, as corporate interests and government officials scramble to soothe a remarkably unruffled consumer, I think not of "mad cows." (What a clever naming convention, as if the cows are to blame!)

I see a mad world, and I feel a lonely sense of grief for its lack of humanity and common sense.


Interesting analysis from the Seattle P/I today.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/155861_madcow09.html

As someone wisely mentioned above, buy local, organically grown produce as much as possible. And, of course, Go Vegan. Not bad advice, really.

[info being]

27. If the country was like the people of Seattle, everything would be OK

[info being]

28. Good point, but let's face it...

Today we're burying waste from Nuclear Power Plants that will remain radioactive for 1.6 million years. We've already decided that human life (for that matter, all life) on earth is a short-term thing. The Mad Cow spin is just one more example.

[goforit]

32. How many of you see what I see....."You are what you eat"?.....

I don't want to insult anyone and certainly don't intend to but,

I do notice people who eat alot of pork....begin to look like_____.

And people who eat alot of beef look like______.

And people who eat only veggies look like______.

And people who only eak chicken look like_______.

:tinfoilhat:

Now I have been told by surgical nurses that are vegetarians that they
are capable of smelling those who are beef eaters and those
who are vegetarians.

Now I stopped eating beef in 1986 due to digestion problems.
I still eat all chicken and fish and ofcourse veggies.
I wonder though if Chicken is fed their own parts or beef parts.

How stupid were these people to change herbivors into carnivors.
Those old lessons we've learned as children...
"You don't fool with mother nature"
are so simple.

[lapislzi]

33. chickens are fed beef by products

that's one reason why even the fail safes that are currently being proposed won't work.

You can stop the cattle from eating cattle, but the parts are circulated all over the place.

Of course, something bigger is going on here in terms of business, and we all know what it is. It's CHEAP to feed cows back to cows.

[goforit]

35. Big gulp!!!...............

I guess everyone is prime suspect.

Organic food should be demanded.