Canadian Prof on Hindu Origin of Mad Cow Disease

[Guest guest]

CLOAKANDDAGGER.DE EXCLUSIVE!

Canadian Prof on Hindu Origin of Mad Cow Disease

September 8, 2005

 

"The Dahmer Cow Theory of Human Mad Cow Disease"

by Prof. Joe Cummins*

 

"Is the Dahmer Cow theory a good one? You bet it is a good one. It

will stimulate a good deal of research and discussion that may lead

to the final understanding of where vCJD comes from and uncover ways

of avoiding or eradicating vCJD."

 

 

Mad cow disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is

caused by infectious molecules called prions. Prions are proteins

that are infectious and have the ability to spread their infectious

configuration to the normal cellular proteins from which they

originated. Prions cause nerve cell degradation turning the brain

into a structure resembling a sponge. What makes a normal gene go

bad and produce an infectious prion from a well behaved cell

protein? The answer is that there has been a catastrophic mutation

in the gene producing the normal protein. The resulting infectious

prion resists heat, strong radiation and most of the other means of

sterilizing objects.

 

Mad cow disease first appeared in the early 1980s; it

seems to have originated from a rare transfer of an older disease of

sheep called scrapie. Scrapie disease caused sheep to be

disoriented, to stagger and to crave rubbing against trees or

fences. The mad cow syndrome included disorientation and staggering.

Nearly 200,000 cases of BSE were encountered in Britain in 1992 when

the disease peaked and that disease has appeared in cattle in a

number of countries. BSE was mainly transmitted by materials from

slaughterhouse offal containing material from brain, spinal cord or

bone marrow. Offal was added to cattle feed to enhance rapid growth

of calves and of milk production.

 

In 1995, a new kind of transmissible spongiform

encephalopathy appeared in the human population. The new disease was

called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). The new disease

vCJD was evidently caused by transfer of BSE from cattle to man. The

disease was acquired by consuming meat from BSE infected cattle.

However, the manner in which BSE was altered to create vCJD remains

open to question and theory.

 

A husband and wife research team, Alan and Nancy

Colchester from the Britain recently proposed a novel theory about

the origin of vCJD. That theory is that vCJD prion was acquired

first in cattle that had been consuming human remains. I have

facetiously called it the Dahmer (after the notorious urban

cannibal, Jeffrey Dahmer) Cow Theory of vCJD. The theory argues that

the vCJD prion was first acquired by cattle that had been fed the

remains of people who had suffered from the rare old disease

Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease that had been recognized for nearly a

century. Those cattle then transmitted the newly created vCJD to

humans who consumed infected meat. Of course, cattle are not well

known to have eaten people, at least people on the move. The

Colchesters argued that human remains were being harvested in India

along with the remains of animals and processed for addition to

cattle feed being employed in Britain and continental Europe. India

they argued was the most likely source of human remains because

cadavers and partly burned cadavers are disposed of in the

waterways. Human and animal bones and body parts were harvested by

peasants then processed for shipment to Britain for use in cattle

feed and fertilizer. The practice of adding the imported human offal

to British cattle feed persisted until the 1990s when the hazard of

feeding offal to cattle was generally recognized.

 

Is the Dahmer Cow theory a good one? You bet it is a good

one. It will stimulate a good deal of research and discussion that

may lead to the final understanding of where vCJD comes from and

uncover ways of avoiding or eradicating vCJD.

 

 

 

Reference

 

Colchester,A and Colchester,N. The origin of bovine spongiform

encephalopathy: the human prion disease hypothesis Lancet 2005,

366,856-61

 

 

 

Biographical Sketch: *Joe Cummins is Professor Emeritus of Genetics,

University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario. He was born in

Whitefish, Montana Feb. 5, 1933. He obtained a BS degree in

Horticulture, Washington State University 1955 and a PhD degree in

Cellular Biology from University of Wisconsin 1962. His postdoctoral

work was at Edinburgh, Palermo, Stockholm (Karolinska) and the

Macardle Laboratory for Cancer Research University of Wisconsin. He

taught genetics at Rutgers and the University of Washington, Seattle

before joining The University of Western Ontario in 1972. His

involvement in environmental issues arose in 1968 and he have been

involved in a range of issues involving mercury, asbestos and PCB

pollution and pesticide pollution along with waste sites and

incinerators. His criticism of genetic modification by genetic

engineering beginning in 1988 when he encountered the power of

multinational corporations over the federal government and their

refusal to face serious risk evaluations. He has published over 200

scientific and popular articles, his most recent papers appeared in

Nature Biotechnology, The Ecologist, and Biotechnology and

Development Review. And he has a number of reviews and comments

listed on the website of The Institute of Science in Society, PO Box

32097, London NW1 OXR UK www.i-sis.org.uk <http:%5C%5Cwww.i-

sis.org.uk%5Cindex.php>

 

http://cloakanddagger.de/