UDDER DENIAL or WHY MAD COW DISEASE MAY BE IN YOUR FRIDGE

Mad-Cow has to be the most intriguing fatal disease on the planet. Imagine the scenario you're walking along eating this hamburger, not knowing that as you munch, alien invaders are climbing out of the meat, through your tongue, bouncing like happy, yellow pac-men toward your brain which THEY will eat the way you're inhaling that burger. You don't know you're infected so you get married and have a child---who, you guessed it, is born with the Satan bug pre-loaded, already munching away at his brain.

The truth about Mad Cow is so horrific nothing is taught about it in med schools. Until a year ago, most scientists knew Jack in the Box about it---(malady originally found in cannibals but mysteriously, at times seemingly spontaneously in non-cannibals)--which was probably for the best. If doctors had known any more, med students would have realized they had no more than five or ten years to live, quit school and spent their last years surfing Tahiti.

A lot of people would have you believe only Mad-Cow and Englishmen go out in the Noon day sun. Hooey. Mad-cow has been killing American sheep since the early 70's, U.S. cows since the mid-80's, and U.S. citizens for the last decade.

The reason it hasn't been made public is that the people who had the facts chose to misinterpret them. They are in udder denial. Scientists have know the truth about Mad-Cow for ll years, since l985 when Britain's #1 researcher, a microbiologist, discovered and announced them. It took him a decade to publish his Feb, l995 book which claimed a hundred plus humans dead of Mad-Cow might imply the British beef supply was infected.

(Two prestigious medical journals trashed the book in scathing reviews the same week as a Rock group named "Mad-Cow Disease" made its London debut to rave reviews. Go figure.

Summer '95, the Canadian Red Cross had a blood recall when they discovered two infected Canadians had donated blood but the press only wanted to talk about a sick bull whose owner refused to destroy him. The November '95 issue of the

British Medical Journal suggested the possibility that maybe people got Mad Cow from eating beef. Three million Brits immediately quit eating beef.

Mad-Cow hit our shore in two blows --the first January 12th, l996, when John Darnton wrote a long article on balmy bovines for the New York Times, the second March 20th, l996, when the British government finally admitted to the world that the obscure, brain-disintegrating cow malady called Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (Latin for sponge brains) was the same disease found in a lot of dead sheep, in the brains of several hundred dead Brits and the same disease that turned cannibals' minds to mush back in New Guinea in the 1940's.

White man wasn't supposed to get the cannibal bug. Papuans deserved things like that. These dumb-nuts ate their deceased family members' brains as a social ritual, hoping to keep their relatives thoughts 'alive' and know the future.

Once a Papuan was infected, any children born, automatically had the infection incubating inside them and the whole family died dingy. It was a weird sickness which deserved the most obscure name possible and "Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease" did the job.

CJD was a 'prion' disease, so called after the minuscule protein particle that seemed to cause it, not a bacteria, not a microbe, but a virus, a sub-microscopic speck that had no DNA or genetic structure, A Flying Dutchman of a protein particle like an unpiloted plane, just a few simple atoms of death strung on an amino ribbon floating single-mindedly through a mammalian body until it found the area where it loves to root, the brain. There, the prion embeds itself, bonding with a single healthy protein molecule and like a cult leader, instructing him to mutate into a twisted prion like itself. Then, the newly converted devotee molecule does the same thing, converting another normal cell, setting off a chain reaction-series of imploding, self-destructing cells, leaving large, ventilated, vacant spaces. The cult is as lethal as it is patient not caring if it burns down the church as it quite happily decays into the ground, hungrily waiting a few centuries for another victim.

Though science would have us believe CJD can be sporadic, or appear out of nowhere, CJD enters us only when another person's flesh is eaten. White men didn't eat their brothers, so there was no thought in early researchers, Cruetzfeldt-Jacob, that bwana could get this bizarre mush brain syndrome. But as a wise man once said, science never advances so fast as when it is dead wrong.

If there are coherent universes contained inside coherent universes, microcosms above and below, why can't germs have feelings and aspirations? As germs go, this one was a bug with imagination. It wasn't interested in crawling on the savannah of Papua, in some blade of grass, It wanted 'the big time,' so it waited until a chipmunk ate the grass, the aborigine ate the chipmunk then the germ tap-danced up the poor man's brain stem to the man's brain, eating holes in this gray matter until the cerebrum resembled a big, gray sponge and the host became spastic, mindless and started laughing, as mindless people everywhere do, only this fellow would laugh himself to death and then, as if to 'get' the joke, his children ate his brain.

At first, the disease seemed kind of fun. Imagine Cruetzfeldt and Jacob coming upon this native, laughing himself to death with kuru, (the Papuan name for it) then embarking for Europe, with the laughing man's pickled brain in a jar. Seeing no germs in any lens of the period, they threw this spongy cauliflower into their little British garden. A trillion prions abated into the ground, waiting for some low-grazing animal to come munching toward them, and along came the family pet, Wooly the Ram. Bingo! It's Mega-death starring The Cannibal Bug opening at the Palladium.

That might well have been the scenario for, after New Guinea, the disease's next official appearance involved a big, geographic leap. In the 70's, it appeared in the sheep herds of Britain. British sheepherders, with Celtic poesy, called the penchant "scrapie" after the sick sheep's habit of rubbing up against things.

As breeders traded sheep like baseball cards, scrapie moved to sheep herds in America which in 1970 had an epizootic amount of laughy, rubbing sheep. For a while farmers wondered if their teen-aged kids had dosed herds with some of those new-fangled, hippie drugs. Rams and ewes who had never met a cannibal started exhibiting an odd, itch to scrape their heads and hides against fences, even if the fences were barbed wire. No one suspected that scrapie was just that old Papuan wolf hiding in sheep's clothing. It was beyond imagination that a cannibal infection on one, isolated continent could leap to food chain-animals on another continent, unless the unseen six fingered hand of some alien gray Dr. Pasteur was at work. Maybe all those cattle mutilations in the South West were really UFO research, designed to vacate this fine planet of bothersome earthlings, fitting it for new, silvery skinned tenants.

Or were cattle mutilations the work of "local talent" who didn't want to alarm farmers with requests for cow labia? In l970, the U.S Dept of Agriculture and National Institute of Health were on some kind of secret detail. They collected thousands of scrapie-infected sheep, examined them, isolating the animals in pens, in up-state New York, but then, according to Howard Lyman of the U.S. Humane Society, (an ex cattle rancher who was privy to all this), the NIH (i.e. Washington) sold the sick animals to farmers across the USA.

When these sheep later died, unsuspecting farmers sold their corpses to the rendering industry to make cattle feed, in order to GET l00$ rather than SPEND 500$ for an autopsy. Unwittingly, the U.S. Government had sent a gaggle of happy little Papuan prions off to have their way with a lot of unsuspecting American cows.

In the USA there is an enormous industry of turning cow corpses into Soylent Green to fatten livestock, called 'feeder cattle,' meaning cattle raised to be eaten by cattle. This practice is so solidly entrenched in the USA that you can actually trade commodity futures on 'feeder animals.'

Back in the 70's the delegated feeders were sheep who'd died of scrapie.This was simply American frugality to use up all those imported, sick sheep. Grinding up dead animals worked well for American ranchers; cows buffed up into Schwarzeneggers so Brits began doing it to their dead sheep and in the 70's, Brits were losing a lot of sheep to scrapie. Why not cut losses with cash for corpses? Trusting beef-farmers bought hi-protein certain-death feed for their cows for the next 18 years. Because the UK had an enormous percentage of sheep to cows, every cow got a daily, heaping serving of kibbled sheep. And poor, trusting Brits ate a lot of the infected sheep too, as in Britain, mutton is consumed.

For the first time since Papua, humans got prions in their brains. How not to? Farmers and butchers couldn't see that a sheep was ill. At slaughter time, the dementia hadn't yet manifested. Even if it had, in l974, the top UK microbiologist/researcher, Dr. Richard Lacey and his U.S. counterpart, Dr. Stanley Prusiner had only just set up their electron microscopes to study prion diseases. In those days researchers thought prion diseases were only genetic.

The fact that they were infectious first, later becoming genetic was beyond imagination. So get the picture 26 years ago, microbiologists in two countries could see the bug, farmers, veterinarians and butchers couldn't. There were no antibody markers visible at any time during incubation so sick ewes freely gave their illness to their baby lambs who carried the bug straight to human tables. In Britain, mutton may have infected Brits. We say 'may' as there is a theory that CJD does not come to humans through sheep, but rather, after another step up the food chain, through sheep-kibble to cows, then through beef steak into human mouths. The logic of science is hazy to the point of denial here as there were human dementia deaths in the 70's but they were ascribed to Alzheimer's, the disease that was giving doctors deep-pockets, so prions, sheep and sloppy doctors were all off the hook.

But all that was soon to change. In l985, British farmers noticed that an illness suspiciously like scrapie turned up in a cow. Patient Zero was a Holstein dairy cow who started kicking like a chorus girl, developed an extreme case of the jitters then fell over dead. Her brain was examined posthumously, its Swiss cheese appearance noted and the disease given the name "Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy" or BSE, a whole letter away in the dictionary from Cruetzfeldt and a dictionary away from 'Scrapie.'

In a cow, the bug caused more than just an itch to scrape. BSE was a true "Dementia" disease, like Alzheimer's is for humans, i.e. memory loss, motor function changes, loss of large movements like walking ability. Eyesight is lost, the ability to make fine movements with the hands, loss of spacial arrangements like parking a car. A lot of that is not crucial to a cow, but it was hard for the farmer to milk Bessie when she was splayed on the ground shaking, screaming and dancing around like James Brown. A cow is a lot more valuable than a sheep. Beef-farmers demanded answers. At first, nobody connected spastic cows with the scrapie sheep of the 70's and certainly not with New Guinea cannibals of the 40's but in l986, a professor of Microbiology at Leeds University, consultant to the W.H.O., Dr. Richard Lacey, announced that scrapie, BSE and CJD were the same thing, that beef disease was in the meat supply, could kill humans and that a wave of deaths would soon hit Britain.

-- ...@...com (...@...com), December 25, 2000

Answers

This is an unfolding disaster. It is affecting more than cattle and sheep. Eighty-five zoo animals, 24 species, from 4 countries have been infected with BSE. British house cats are increasingly infected with a feline version of BSE; the suspect is their feed which is contaminated with animal by-products.

Fifteen per cent of deer in N.E. Colorado and S.e. Wyoming are infected with a prion disease similar to scrapie. A study in the Journal of Wildlife Disease found 4.9% of mule deer, 2.1% of white- tailed deer, and .5% of elk to be infected.

On October 27, 2000 a surgeon at Tulane University in New Orleans performed 8 brain surgeries using instruments that had been used on a patient who later died of CJD. The sterilizatkion of these instruments did not remove the CJD prion, which is only killed by 800 degrees F.

The disaster in Europe is the result of the British government's and beef industry's public denial of the danger of eating beef contaminated by feed containing ground up scrapie-infected sheep, even after lab evidence was clear on the dangers. British medical scientists now fear this epidemic may be unfolding for the next 50 years or more.

-- Johnn Littmann (littmannj@aol.com), December 25, 2000.

What an incredibly sick and disgusting thing is this meat industry. And now they reap what they have sown. And then have the nerve to act surprised and terrified.

btw...there is NO mad cow disease in my fridge and I refuse to worry about it

-- cin (cin@cin.cin), December 25, 2000.

One hundred years from now only vegetarians will be left on this world. Everybody else will be dead, INCLUDING THE IRS!!!

That is how FREEDOM will be accomplished!

It will be a wonderful world to live in!

-- Bungy Jumper (bungyjumper@aol.com), December 25, 2000.

Vegetarians may be alive IF the fertilizer in their fields does not contain the Mad Cow prion - it does not decay and will be in the ground and dust as long as nuclear waste stays active...IF the heavy metals from industrial waste being turned into fertilizer don't get them. you have to watch what you eat from seed to harvest.

-- Johnn Littmann (littmannj@aol.com), December 26, 2000.

People, people, people,

This article is not science but scare. The article, if you can even call it that, says, and I quote,

"In the USA there is an enormous industry of turning cow corpses into Soylent Green to fatten livestock, called 'feeder cattle,' meaning cattle raised to be eaten by cattle. This practice is so solidly entrenched in the USA that you can actually trade commodity futures on 'feeder animals' ".

"Feeder cattle" are not cows that are to be fed to other cows, "feeder cattle" are cows that you buy to fatten up for slaughter (for human consumption). You buy them to FEED them to fatten them up, hence the name, "feeder cattle".

The writer of this piece is obviously clueless.

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), December 26, 2000.

J,

I read that, too and almost fell off my chair from laughing so hard.

But what is really sad is that some of the idiots on this forum [cin and -- ...@...com] believe everything they read on the Net!

BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

-- guess who (kiss.my@ass.com), December 26, 2000.

I'm simply horrified!!!!!!

-- no eaten beef! (noeatnbeefhere@notabeefeaterrr.com), December 27, 2000.

"In the USA there is an enormous industry of turning cow corpses into Soylent Green to fatten livestock, called 'feeder cattle,' meaning cattle raised to be eaten by cattle.

WRONG! SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!!

-- (Charlton Heston@said.so), December 27, 2000.

I checked; there is no mad cow in my fridge; in fact, there isn't any "cow" in my fridge. That would be quite a tight squeeze.

Is this the latest "we're doomed" thing? I need to pay attention to these things.

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), December 27, 2000.

So there's a mistake in the "feeder cattle" statement. Don't get so excited that you miss the truth. Rendering plants turn dead cows, sheep, chickens, goats, etc. into animal feed. They boil it all up which kills the E. coli 0157, salmonella, etc. But it doesn't kill the BSE/CJD prion.

The disease has killed hundreds in UK. We don't know what is going on here because its all hush-hush. Any lab that reports finding it will get shut down as being contaminated.

-- John Littmann (littmannj@aol.com), December 27, 2000.

Again we have the huge conspiracy problem. I avoided Y2K doom because I could not fathom a conpsiracy so large that proof of our immediate demise could be hidden so well. It would have to involve too many people and it is human nature not to keep a secret.

And so this applies here. How many folks would have to be involved to keep the mass poisoning(chemtrails anyone) of americans by "prions" secret? I do not buy this. I did not then, and I will not now.

-- SydBarrett (dark@side.moon), December 27, 2000.

John:

I agree with J. That is a big mistake, but only one of many. I predict an autobiographical movie, titled, "Clueless about Cattle". This person knows absolutely nothing about the area.

But believe if you wish.

Best Wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), December 27, 2000.

John Littmann,

Take a deep breath.

This "researcher" (LOL) says, "CJD enters us only when another person's flesh is eaten".

In the very next paragraph, he says, "It (the prion) wasn't interested in crawling on the savannah of Papua, in some blade of grass, It wanted 'the big time', so it waited until the chipmunk ate the grass, the aborigine ate the chipmunk then the germ tap-danced up the poor man's brain stem to the man's brain ..."

So which of these obviously contradictory statements is true? Does the prion "enter us only when another person's flesh is eaten", or can the prion be in a "blade of grass" waiting to enter us through the consumption of vegetable matter like our poor little friend the chipmunk?

I am eagerly awaiting your response.

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), December 28, 2000.

Um, NO MAD COW IN FRIDGE.

Mad Hubby @ Mailbox looking at credit card bill though.

Mad teen in basement cuz he is grounded.

Mad Bearded Dragon awaiting crickets.

Mad Consumer awaiting interest rate decline.

-- sumer (shh@aol.con), December 29, 2000.

J, The prion is a protein. It doesn't have a life. It can get into the soil from animal excrement or from a dead animal. It can be blown about by the wind in dry dust particles which could land on the surfaces of plants. I don't know if it would be absorbed by a plant through its roots.

-- Johnn Littmann (littmannj@aol.com), January 01, 2001.

Oh don't worry about it. Just cook all of your meat at 800 degrees and you will be fine!

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), January 01, 2001.

John Littmann,

If it CAN get into plants via the roots, what do you propose that we as the human race feast on for our sustenance?

It is my opinion that the writer of the article has a bias against consuming meat. However, it appears as if in his haste to spread fear into meat eaters, he may have inadvertantly painted eating in general to be a dangerous affair.

Surely you don't advocate starving yourself to death as a viable precautionary measure to avoid contracting CJD, do you? : )

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), January 01, 2001.

I made a new years resolution to avoid Prions at all cost. I love them in a sciampi, and I love them in a white sauce with linguini-but i will have to learn to live without the critters.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), January 02, 2001.