Origins of mad cow disease

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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Origins of mad cow disease

Posted: 1/28/2006 1:52:58 PM EDT

Anyone else find it strange that ranchers were importing chunks of dead human bodies as feed for their cattle? WTF?

BSE may have come from dead people

* 10 September 2005
* From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.

THE search for the original cause of mad cow disease just took a gruesome turn.

Rather than originating in British cattle in the 1980s, or in an exotic animal ground up and fed to them, the prion disease may have come from dead people.

Alan Colchester and Nancy Colchester at the universities of Kent and Edinburgh in the UK suggest that British cattle could have caught BSE after eating the remains of people who died of the related human prion disease CJD. The team has discovered that the UK imported hundreds of thousands of tonnes of carcass scraps in the 1960s and 1970s for use in feed and fertiliser. Nearly half came from India, where many incompletely cremated human bodies end up in rivers. From there they may be retrieved by bone collectors who supply the carcass exporters. These shipments - which continue, although no longer to Europe - were known to contain human remains.

However, India's federal secretary for animal husbandry P. M. A. Hakeem called the hypothesis, published in the journal The Lancet (vol 366, p 856), "highly mischievous" and "absurd". Indian scientists also criticised the idea. In the same issue of the journal they say that any human remains infected with CJD would be "enormously diluted" in cattle feed.

But so would all the other diseased animals proposed as the source of BSE. And the researchers say their hypothesis is no less plausible than other proposed transmission routes. They estimate some 120 CJD victims a year were cremated in India in the 1960s and 1970s, and point out that it takes an extraordinarily small amount of prion to infect an animal. A simple experiment would settle the matter, they say: infect cattle with human prions, and see what happens.

Posted: 1/28/2006 1:55:14 PM EDT

[#1]

Yum!

Posted: 1/28/2006 3:18:10 PM EDT

[#2]

It makes sense, there is an Aboriginal tribe somewhere in Polynesia that still have the practice of eating their dead chiefs and warriors to "preserve" their strong spirits. They don't eat cows and almost all of them have BSE. 30 year olds are rare and most that reach that age are suffering from dementia due to BSE. This is probably the main reason most societies on earth had developed some sort of taboo against cannibalism.

Posted: 1/28/2006 8:49:03 PM EDT

[#3]

Don't remember the author, but read "Deadly Feasts". It will answer all your questions, and put you off eating sheep, pork, chickens, and beef, as well as fertilizing your roses.

Hell with it, we're all gonna die. I had a HUGE rib steak for dinner.

1911fan

Posted: 1/28/2006 9:02:06 PM EDT

[#4]

There have only been ~150 diagnosed cases of BSE related CJD, world wide.
Considering the 100,000's of pounds of beef that are consumed DAILY worldwide, that puts the odds of contracting "Mad Cow disease" lower than that of a shark attack or lightning strike.
Or

Posted: 1/28/2006 9:05:49 PM EDT

[#5]

Quoted:
Don't remember the author, but read "Deadly Feasts". It will answer all your questions, and put you off eating sheep, pork, chickens, and beef, as well as fertilizing your roses.

Hell with it, we're all gonna die. I had a HUGE rib steak for dinner.

1911fan

[Heston] SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOOOPPPLLLLEEEE[/Heston]

If people tasted good I would eat them.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Origins of mad cow disease

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