A massive outbreak in some 200,000 cows probably resulted from feeding ground-up cow remains to cattle. When the danger was recognized, this practice was stopped. Initially, it was believed that the disease could not pass the species barrier. Then, people of median age 26 started dying from a brain-destroying ailment, which was called new-variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) because of its resemblance to a rare, sporadic disease primarily affecting older persons. Public confidence in government was shattered, and the modelers confidently predicted hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths.
Although 60 million people had eaten possibly contaminated beef, the predicted exponential upturn in vCJD never materialized. To date, the cumulative total of cases in Britain has reached about 150 (Verghese A. Wall St J 12/30/03). As of November 2002, six cases had been reported in France and one each in Canada, Ireland, Italy, and the U.S., according to the World Health Organization. France imported large quantities of beef from the U.K., and all but one of the patients in other countries had lived in the U.K.
The BSE agent is thought to be a abnormally folded protein called a prion, which somehow induces other proteins to fold in the same fashion (see DDP Newsletter 1/01). Protein aggregates are found in the brain in vCJD, but also in about 20 other neurodegenerative diseases. The causative role of prions is generally accepted, but the evidence is mainly epidemiologic. The ability of the agent to form multiple strains is more characteristic of a virus-like entity, according to WHO fact sheet #180 (11/02).
It is possible that vCJD is not a new disease after all. “The rate of growth...is entirely consistent with the view that improved ascertainment of a previously misdiagnosed disease has occurred” (Venters GA. BMJ 2001;323:858-861). The hypothesis will be falsified if cases appear in persons born after the prion has been eliminated from the food supply.
The response to the situation has been the Precautionary Principle gone wild—and probably spilling over into other issues such as genetically modified foods, according to Iain Murray ( www.techcentralstation.be , 5/3/03).
The mad cow affair helped to bring down Britain's Conservative government, imposed costs of $4 billion just for slaughtering cattle, and ruined the livelihoods of countless farmers. International costs could reach hundreds of billions of dollars.
As implemented here, the Precautionary Principle, so often invoked to justify policies in advance of proof, may sound sensible—but is it? As Steven A. Shaw points out, it turns the normal process of scientific reasoning on its head, and disregards the cost: benefit ratio. “If we were to destroy an entire key industry every time several dozen people died from a disease potentially associated with it, civilization would grind to a halt” (Commentary, March 2001). It is one thing to order the destruction of affected cattle; quite another to slaughter millions that have never been tested.
Shaw wonders whether the fear of vCJD proved so contagious because of the success of the vegetarian, animal-rights, anti-fast-food, and anti-agriculture lobbies, which are unusually powerful in Britain. (Vegetarians, by the way, have contracted vCJD.)
In the U.S., a radical animal-rights group called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM)—the offspring of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals or PETA—is using the discovery of a BSE-afflicted cow to further its agenda of removing all meat from the American diet by any means necessary (www.newsmax.com 12/26/03).
Many nations, including Japan, banned imports of U.S. beef when the report of the infected cow came out. About 10% of U.S. beef is produced for export (Wall St J 12/30/03). U.S. cattle futures are plunging, while the price of Australian beef has jumped.
Advanced Meat Recovery machinery that blasts the last bits of flesh off the carcass to include in processed foods is under scrutiny. Although the spinal cord is removed first, and the remaining cord and remnant are sucked out, some traces of spinal cord tissue are still detectable in 33% of samples (Seattle Post-Intelligencer 12/27/03).
The putative BSE agent has been found in the brain, spinal cord, dorsal root ganglia, distal ileum, and bone marrow of cattle infected by the oral route. There is no information about what might constitute an infective dose. According to the CDC, the current risk of acquiring vCJD from eating beef or beef products in Britain is possibly about one case per 10 billion servings and should be less elsewhere.
U.S. veterinary officials are also trying to curtail an outbreak of the related condition, chronic wasting disease, in Western elk and deer (Science 2001;294:978-979).
The potential danger of BSE is tiny in comparison with that of a worldwide pandemic of readily transmissible influenza. In 1918-1919, the “Spanish Flu” claimed 20 to 40 million lives, more than World War I, and even more than the Black Death in the 1300s. In the average year, there are about 36,000 deaths from influenza, primarily from complications—based on a mathematical model and extrapolations.
Every year, public health officials play a guessing game about what strains will be involved in the yearly outbreak, and manufacturers guess how many doses of vaccine to produce. This year, both guesses were wrong. The vaccine is only partly effective against the prevalent strain, and the publicity surrounding an early onset of the season led to the depletion of vaccine supplies.
The vaccine is not risk-free. Occasional long-term complications such as chronic Guillain-Barre syndrome are reported. Each dose of the vaccine contains 25 micrograms of mercury in the preservative thimerosal—250 times the EPA-recommended limit for eating tuna. While this should not be a problem for an adult, the dose in children greatly exceeds the EPA-recommended limits of 0.4 mcg/kg/day (Insight 2/3-17/04). Thimerosal in childhood vaccines has been linked to neurodevelopment disorders such as autism (J Am Phys Surg 2003;8:6-11;68-70;76-79, www.jpands.org).
There are effective drugs—which, unlike Cipro, have not been stockpiled. The CDC is now in the process of obtaining supplies of oseltamivir (Tamiflu), which is 90% effective at preventing all strains of influenza, including the avian type that is resistant to other drugs. It may also ameliorate the illness if taken within 48 hours of onset. Amantadine and rimantadine are effective against influenza A. Check your emergency kits!
Cresson Kearny, our nation's foremost expert on expedient civil defense, died Dec. 18, 2003, at the age of 89. More than half a million copies of his indispensable book Nuclear War Survival Skills are in print; he never accepted royalties as he wanted the information to be as widely available as possible. He is also the author of Jungle Snafus. His inventions, used by hundreds of thousands of American and Allied troops, include a backpackable, breath-inflated boat; the jungle hammock; the jungle boot; and the jungle pack. Mr. Kearny attended and spoke at every DDP meeting until his health failed. He will be memorialized at the 22nd annual meeting in San Diego.
Mark your calendars for June 26-27 at the San Diego Marriott Mission Valley.
DDP, 1601 N. Tucson Blvd. Suite 9, Tucson, AZ 85716, (520)325-2680, www.oism.org/ddp.