BBC south Asia 'Human remains link' to BSE cases

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'Human remains link' to BSE cases

By Paul Rincon

BBC News science reporter

 

 

The first cases of BSE or " mad cow disease "

could have been caused by animal feed

contaminated with human remains, says a

controversial theory.

 

Some raw materials for fertiliser and feed

imported from South Asia in the 60s and 70s

contained human bones and soft tissue, the Lancet

reports.

 

Bone collectors could have picked up the remains

of corpses deposited in the Ganges river to sell

for export.

 

If infected with prion diseases, they could have been the source for BSE.

 

I don't think anyone has thought about the very

rare but very important risk posed by the corpse

of someone who has died from a version of CJD

Professor Alan Colchester, University of Kent

 

But the theory has been greeted with scepticism

by several experts on Bovine Spongiform

Encephalopathy (BSE).

 

The authors admit their evidence stops short of

proving their case, but argue that their theory

is plausible enough to warrant further

investigation.

 

The appearance of a form of CJD in humans, known

as variant CJD or vCJD, has been linked to the

BSE outbreak and is blamed for hundreds of deaths.

 

Prions, the abnormal proteins that cause CJD and

vCJD in humans, BSE in cows and scrapie in sheep,

are remarkably resistant to both natural decay

and sterilisation procedures.

 

Funerary practices

 

The UK imported hundreds of thousands of tonnes

of whole bones, crushed bones and carcass parts

in the 1960s and 1970s to make fertiliser as well

as meat and bone meal feed.

 

Nearly 50% came from Bangladesh, India and

Pakistan, where gathering large bones and

carcasses from the countryside and from rivers is

an established local trade.

 

Hindu funerary practices require that human

remains are disposed of in a river, preferably

the Ganges. Although the body should ideally be

burned, many people cannot afford enough wood for

a full cremation, the report's authors claim.

 

Simply smoking the pelvis in women and the torso

in men is sometimes enough. And many complete

corpses are thrown into the Ganges.

 

" There are a whole range of public health

concerns over Ganges pollution, " lead author

Professor Alan Colchester, of the University of

Kent, told the BBC News website.

 

" But amongst all the recognition of potential

problems, I don't think anyone has thought about

the very rare but very important risk posed by

the corpse of someone who has died from a version

of CJD. "

 

Human remains have been described in material

delivered to processing mills. And during the

1960s, human material was confirmed in

consignments of bones shipped into French docks

from Asia.

 

A spokesman for the Department for Environment

Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said it went along

with the findings of a 2001 report into the

origin of BSE, where a favoured hypothesis was

that BSE had its origins with scrapie.

 

But the spokesman said the department was open minded about new findings.

 

Indian findings

 

Dr David Brown of the University of Bath, an

expert in prion diseases, told the BBC News

website: " It's certainly a possibility that you

can't rule out completely, but I would say that

on a scale of probability, it would be down at

the low end. "

 

Professor Colchester estimates that about 120

Hindu people die from CJD each year. But Dr Brown

pointed out that the poor, who might account for

many corpses in the Ganges, also have a

relatively short life expectancy. Human prion

diseases, meanwhile, often present themselves in

old age.

 

Professor Susarla Shankar, head of neurology at

the National Institute of Mental Health and

Neurosciences in Bangalore, India, said he

thought the theory would not stand up to

scientific scrutiny.

 

" If this was so, you would expect to find more

cases of BSE in Indian cattle. At the moment, the

surveillance centre doesn't have a single case, "

he told the BBC News website.

 

Bone collecting was a traditional practice, he

said, but added that even if some human material

was making it into the raw materials for animal

feed it would be so little as to be of scant

consequence.

 

Resilient proteins

 

But only a tiny amount of contaminated brain

tissue is needed to transmit human CJD to

nonhuman primates in the lab. On the other hand,

nothing is known about the transmission of human

prion diseases to cattle.

 

It was shown in the 1980s that prion proteins

could survive the entire chain of processes

leading to the production of animal feed in an

infectious form.

 

The feeding of mammalian meat and bone meal to

farm animals has been banned since 1996. Yet

sporadic cases of BSE have occurred in the UK and

in Europe, where regulations were also tightened,

since the ban. These cases remain unexplained.

 

Professor Bill Hill of the University of

Edinburgh said the incidence of the disease is

falling and that it was hoped BSE could be

eradicated altogether by adhering to measures put

in place to control the disease.

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/4201072.stm

 

Published: 2005/09/01 23:15:20 GMT

 

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