This is Your Brain on Meat

[Guest guest]

March 22, 2007

 

That Steak and the Hole in Your Head

This is Your Brain on Meat

By MICKEY Z.

 

The March 21, 2007 edition of the New York Times featured an article

called " Prevalence of Alzheimer's Rises 10% in 5 Years. " It began:

" More than five million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, a 10

percent increase from the last official tally five years ago, and a

number expected to more than triple by 2050. " Alzheimer's disease, it

seems, now afflicts 13% of people 65 and over, and 42% of those past

85.

 

The piece also reported " the startling finding that 200,000 to 500,000

people younger than 65 have some form of early onset form of dementia,

including a rare form of Alzheimer's disease that strikes people in

their 30s and 40s. " The Times adds: " Apart from early onset cases, the

primary risk factor for Alzheimer's disease is age. "

 

But, dear reader, there's a cow-shaped risk factor sitting in the

corner-ignored by the newspaper of record (and essentially all major

media outlets). And it's a very mad cow.

 

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) has earned the pithy nickname

" mad cow disease " thanks to the invidious symptoms presented in

affected cattle, i.e. staggering, tremors, involuntary muscle spasms,

bewilderment, hypersensitivity to auditory and tactile stimuli, and

other examples of seemingly " mad " behavior.

 

Like BSE, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) is also a transmissible,

invariably fatal spongiform encephalopathy with a prolonged incubation

period that leaves sponge-like holes in a victim's brain. CJD,

however, is the human version and this includes a newly identified

variant of CJD, linked to BSE in British cattle.

 

" In humans, " says author and environmentalist, Peter Montague, " the

BSE-like disease is called 'new variant Creutzfeld-Jacob disease,' or

nvCJD for short. CJD has been recognized for a long time as a rare

disease of the elderly-very similar to Alzheimer's disease-but nvCJD

is different. It has somewhat different symptoms, a different pattern

of disintegration in the brain, and it strikes young people, even

teenagers. Between 1995 and early 1998, at least 23 people died of

nvCJD in Britain and at least one in France, the oldest of them age 42

and the youngest 15. " (Yet the Times is " startled " by the rise in

dementia in younger and younger people.)

 

" CJD robs victims of lucidity, control and life over a period ranging

from six months to three years from the onset of symptoms, which can

take from 10 to 40 years to manifest, " writes journalist Gabe

Kirchheimer. According to Nobel Prize winner Stanley B. Prusiner,

fatal neurodegenerative diseases of animals and humans (like BSE and

CJD) are thought to be caused by infectious proteins called " prions. "

Perhaps what is most disquieting about this hypothesis is that, unlike

viruses and bacteria, prions remain infectious even after being baked

at 680° F for on hour (enough to melt lead), bombarded with radiation,

and/or soaked in formaldehyde, bleach, and boiling water.

 

" CJD is 100 percent fatal, " adds Kirchheimer. " There is no treatment

or cure. As no blood test for the living is available, CJD has been

definitively diagnosed only through brain biopsy. "

 

Studies cited by Kirchheimer indicate it is likely that " tens or even

hundreds of thousands of people are dying right now of undiagnosed or

misdiagnosed CJD. " Government figures estimate approximately 200 to

300 cases of CJD have been diagnosed in the U.S. Before you take

comfort in that modest figure, bear in mind the findings of John

Stauber and Sheldon Rampton. The authors of Mad Cow USA learned that

while some four million Americans (at the time) had been diagnosed

with Alzheimer's disease, autopsies revealed roughly 25% of alleged

Alzheimer's deaths were caused instead by other forms of dementia. One

percent of these misdiagnosed deaths have been ultimately attributed

to CJD. If this trend is extrapolated and one percent of the now five

million Americans with Alzheimer's actually have CJD (or nvCJD), the

nationwide estimate rises dramatically from 200 to 50,000 cases.

 

" It would be rather straightforward to design and execute significant

studies to answer the urgent questions of which dementia diseases

people have, and in what numbers, but to my knowledge no one in the

scientific, medical or public health communities are even proposing

this, " says Stauber. " Especially now that we have found mad cow

disease in the U.S., along with mad deer, mad elk, and mad sheep

disease, we should be launching ongoing studies nation-wide to

aggressively search for cases of CJD in the human population. We

should be testing our human population for CJD; CJD should be made a

carefully reported disease nationwide. "

 

How safe are Americans from being exposed to the human variant of mad

cow disease? In France, a nation with only 5.7 million cows, 20,000

are tested each week with 153 found infected in the year 2000. Out of

the nearly 40 million U.S. cattle slaughtered annually, only about

1000 are tested. You do the math.

 

Kirchheimer concludes: " The growing number of British victims of 'new

variant' CJD, mostly young people in their prime who contracted the

brain sickness from tainted meat, is a grim precursor to an uncertain

future. "

 

Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at

http://www.mickeyz.nethttp://www.mickeyz.net/.

 

 

 

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to

tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of war, corporations have been

enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money

power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the

prejudices of the people until all the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and

the republic is destroyed. I feel, at this moment, more anxiety for the safety

of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my

suspicions may prove groundless. " Lincoln in a letter to Col. William F. Elkins

on November 21, 1864