Good explanation of Mad-Cow, CJD, BSE, TSE, prions, US meat/milk industry

This is a 1998 article by Ellen Ruppel Shell in the Atlantic, written in response to the British Mad-Cow epidemic.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98sep/madcow.htm

Long (three parts), but clearly written for the lay person, and without the obfuscation of the current situation.

Extremely interesting and sobering, no matter what kind of diet you eat.

taken from a book review in the monthly magazine "Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN).....it's an easily understood, but very important 'big picture' of the many diseases involved....bush* should be spending money to detect, control, diagnose, and CURE these horrible diseases (which can be done for much much less than the $ 87 + $ 70 BILLION that bush* is spending on his WARS....less than $ ONE Billion for chemistry would make BIG progress)....

November 10, 2003
Volume 81, Number 45
CENEAR 81 45 pp. 50-51
ISSN 0009-2347


THE INSIDIOUS MARCH OF PRION DISEASES

THE PATHOLOGICAL PROTEIN: Mad Cow, Chronic Wasting, and Other Deadly Prion Diseases, by Philip Yam, Copernicus Books, 2003, 284 pages, $27.50 (ISBN 0-387-95508-9)

REVIEWED BY STEPHEN F. DEALLER

-snips-

To some degree, we treat our agricultural animals as if they are just there to make food and money. So when bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) first appeared in 1986 in the U.K., many of the worries focused on the country's agricultural industry, while the disease was simply pushed to one side. Much of the literature on the subject tells the story of how we gradually realized that maybe humans were at risk, and that perhaps we should worry a bit more.

Yam, an editor for Scientific American, begins this compelling book with the tale of Stephen Churchill, a 19-year-old boy from Southwest England who in 1996 appeared to contract Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a malady normally seen only in elderly people. The disease begins insidiously, with symptoms such as depression and loss of balance. Over several months, Stephen lost his ability to think, see, and move. He finally slipped into a coma and died. Stephen's youth and his disease's resemblance to BSE (mad-cow disease) set off alarm bells around the world, signaling the fear that a lot more disease could be on the way.

The most astounding thing about Churchill's case was that, despite its being a single incident of a previously unknown disease, we could start anticipating the epidemic that might be on its way. The reason--which Yam picks up and explains well--is that the human form of BSE, dubbed variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), is just one of a whole range of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). The libraries of data available on the other conditions allowed us to see that they all shared specific factors, such as dementia and long incubation periods. Yam goes back to those other illnesses and shows how the scientific literature has evolved over the previous 95 years to arrive at our current understanding: These diseases are caused by proteins known as prions.


Yam next introduces chronic wasting disease (CWD), the TSE of deer and elk. He points out that the original case of the disease at the zoo in Fort Collins, Colo., in 1967, was treated as an interesting but unimportant blip. However, "between 1970 and 1981, 90% of the deer that stayed at the zoo more than two years died from the disease or had to be euthanized after the onset of symptoms." was clear that the disease was not transmitted in the food and that it seemed to pass from one animal to another, even between deer that had been in pens next door to each other. The nature of CWD transmission is still unknown, and it continues to be an expanding problem.

So, despite the deaths of teenagers, the incompetence of officials, the short-term money-grabbing nature of agriculture, the worldwide spread of disease, and the horror writers in the media, in the end we may find a cure not only for TSEs, but also for other diseases that have been killing people for many years.



prion protein cellular model (normal protein)



prion protein scrapie--the "pathological protein"--(notice the TWIST in the red structure)

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/books/8145/8145books.html

Great article. You're right, its sobering. Just as in politics, it is better to be informed than to 'trust' that the powers that be will do the right thing...or even know what the right thing is. To me, its a good argument for going back to eating locally or better yet, grow your own.