Nexus - 0803 - New Times Magazine-pages

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MAD COW DISEASE A GLOBALISED DISASTER COW DISEASE MAD GLOBALISED DISASTER Britain's deception and delayed action over the BSE/CJD infection path have created animal and human health crises which are affecting much of Europe and are now spreading to the rest of the world. ince the 1996 admission’ that British cattle suffering from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or "mad cow disease") had introduced the agent of an invariably fatal brain illness (a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, referred to as vCJD) into the human food chain, BSE has subsequently spread to cattle in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and perhaps Sweden. The report from the government-convened Lord Phillips Inquiry’ into BSE in Britain claims that contaminated animal feed the size of a peppercorn can transmit BSE to cattle. To date, almost 200,000 cattle are known to have contracted BSE. Most cases have been in Britain, where the number exceeds 180,000. Another five million cattle, aged less than 30 months and without physical signs of BSE, have been slaughtered in preemptive measures to safeguard public health. Since the initial 10 cases of vCJD were linked to BSE-infected beef in 1996, the disease claimed a further 90 human lives by February 2001, the vast majority of victims being permanent or temporary residents of Britain. Estimates of the anticipated number of human deaths as a result of BSE in cattle vary considerably, but, since the Lord Phillips Inquiry, the Blair Administration has warned that, over time, the figure could reach 250,000°—a big jump from the previous estimate of 136,000 vCJD deaths. The November 2000 announcement gave notice that UK authorities are working with the "worst case scenario" of one in every 250 people in Britain dying from the disease. When questioned, microbiologist Dr Stephen Dealler explained that the revised figure was based on a "guesstimate" that the average Briton had probably eaten BSE-infected meat on 50 occasions, but he also admitted this: "At the moment, the number of cases of CJD we are seeing are doubling every year. If they double for a long time, then the num- bers are in millions; if they double for just a few years, then the numbers are in thousands. At the moment, it is very difficult to know." Unlike scrapie—the sheep equivalent of brain illnesses like BSE in cattle and CJD in humans which has been around for more than two centuries—BSE was unheard of until 1986, a decade after British cattle began to be fed the protein-rich remains of scrapie- infected sheep to accelerate their growth, and, coincidentally, four years after Britain com- menced to expose cattle to organophosphate pesticides. Human spongiform encephalopathy, or CJD, is also a disease of the 20th century, unknown until two German physicians, Creutzfeldt and Jakob, independently reported the first cases in the 1920s. The agent of spongiform encephalopathies incubates in animals and humans for a pro- longed period of time before outward signs of the infection become obvious: in cattle, after five years, on average; and in human cases of CJD resulting from human pituitary growth and infertility hormone injections or contaminated surgical materials, after as few as two to as many as 40 years. By the time symptoms appear, the agent of BSE/CJD has already turned the brain into the sponge-like mass which led this group of diseases to be classified as spongiform slow virus disorders in the first instance. BSE-symptomatic cattle are left confused and trembling, deprived of their own feet to stand on, a furnace their tragic fate. CJD- symptomatic humans also suffer gait problems, and over varying periods of time—in some cases, weeks; in others, months and sometimes years—are progressively robbed of their every means communication, the ability to hear, see and speak. Gone, too, is their by Lynette J. Dumble, PhD, MSc © 201 International Co-ordinator Global Sisterhood Network E-mail: |jdumble@connexus.net.au Website: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~globalsn APRIL — MAY 2001 NEXUS = 11 BACKGROUND TO THE CRISIS www.nexusmagazine.com