January 6, 2004
PC BSE:
Don't Have a Cow: There's no science to justify the panic over the safety of eating beef (Steven Milloy, January 2, 2004, LA Times)
When researchers considered the possibility that variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease was caused by consumption of beef from BSE-infected cattle, no correlations could be established between variant CJD and any specific meat or dairy product. No one could even establish whether any of the variant CJD victims ever consumed beef from diseased cattle.Some researchers nevertheless became fixated on the idea that consumption of infected beef was the culprit behind variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob, especially after it was discovered that 1980s slaughterhouse and meat preparation practices inadvertently might have allowed tissue from diseased cattle to be mixed into packaged meat products such as hot dogs, sausages, beef patties, luncheon meat and the like.
That mere hypothetical possibility spawned mad cow mania.
But the infected-beef hypothesis doesn't explain why variant CJD tends to occur in young people; most cases have occurred among 15- to 25-year-olds.
And it doesn't offer the slightest clue as to why only about 130 variant CJD cases have occurred in a British population of 60 million people who are exposed to millions of pounds of potentially contaminated beef products.
Some have suggested that a kind of "epidemiological Russian roulette" is at work, where consumption of infected beef results in rare and randomly distributed cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. However, the Russian roulette explanation is not a scientific one and should not be the basis of public alarm or public policy. Despite that, the infected beef theory has mutated into an orthodoxy in the medical and public health community that few have been brave enough to challenge.
One public health expert in Britain, George A. Venters, did manage to publish an article in the British Medical Journal in October 2001 titled New variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: The epidemic that never was. Venters maintains that the infected beef theory is simply wrong. He challenges the biological plausibility of BSE causing variant CJD because there is no direct evidence that the supposed vehicle of BSE infection — a special protein called a prion — is infectious. Nor is there direct evidence that BSE prions survive cooking, digestion and the human immune system.
After discussing the numerous deficiencies in the BSE-Creutzfeldt-Jakob hypothesis, Venters observed: "The evidence that has been amassed is directed toward confirming the [BSE-CJD] hypothesis rather than testing it. Salient contrary information has either been played down or ignored."
At the conjunction of scientists and anti-business activists you get even more dubious science than usual. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 6, 2004 4:03 PM
Well, it does seem that there was a smallish epidemic of an otherwise very rare disease.
Whether prions even exist is uncertain.
Nevertheless, it remains true that the combined total of deaths in the U.S. from dioxin and C-J is less than the number killed by bean sprouts in one week last year.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at January 6, 2004 4:39 PMA "smallish epidemic"?
Posted by: oj at January 6, 2004 4:45 PMI'd like to see that cite, Harry. I hate bean sprouts.
Posted by: jefferson park at January 6, 2004 5:04 PMThe whole prion theory is crap. They have never satisfied the Koch criteria. The real tragedy is that the Nobel Committee gave Pusiner a prize before his theory was supported by experiment.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at January 6, 2004 5:06 PMWe could alleviate a lot of these worries by requiring or promoting the irradiation of meat products. Of course that feeds into another whole irrational hysteria. How did we become such wimps about technology?
Posted by: Robert D at January 6, 2004 5:35 PMOJ -- I not sure you get to complain about anti-business activists.
Posted by: David Cohen at January 6, 2004 7:52 PMThat's what all you Communists say.
Posted by: David Cohen at January 6, 2004 9:20 PMDoesn't the set of all scientists in and of itself contain a large subset of anti-business activists?
Posted by: jsmith at January 6, 2004 10:03 PMMake that "scientists"...
Posted by: jsmith at January 6, 2004 10:04 PMJefferson, if I have the beansprout goods, they're on paper. There was an outbreak of salmonellosis via sprouts early in 2003 that killed about 5 or 6. Maybe I can did out the clipping tomorrow.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at January 7, 2004 3:34 AMThere are many cases of E. Coli caused by contaminated alfalfa sprouts.
Cooking does NOT eliminate prions, any more than it would poison.
Irradiating meat would not affect prions.
Prions also survive autoclaving.
It seems likely that the human digestive tract, or the immune system, does do something sensible with prions, else the number of people felled in the UK would have been vastly greater.
Posted by: THX 1138 at January 7, 2004 7:38 AMCan't find my clipping about the sprouts, which were eaten in, of all places, West Virginia, as I recall.
But more generally, see http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/ANSWERS/2002/ANS01164.html
Posted by: Harry Eagar at January 7, 2004 2:38 PMThe number of Brits that contracted new variant C-J was 143, and were all linked to (if memory serves; I lived in England at the time), to meat from two slaughterhouses that had processed a lot of BSE cattle.
Is that a risk worth worrying about? No.
But the odds that those 143 are due to coincidence seems a bit steep.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at January 7, 2004 9:35 PMI remembered you said that, and that's why I called it a miniepidemic. If that's right, it spread epidemic-wise through a restricted population.
Ebola fever does that, too, for a different reason, and nobody doubts that's an epidemic disease.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at January 7, 2004 11:45 PMThanks for the link Harry.
Posted by: Jefferson Park at January 8, 2004 2:12 PMHarry:
As a result of that miniepidemic, I am now a member of a "high risk group."
People really raise their eyebrows when, on being asked, I tell them why I didn't donate blood on the latest drive.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at January 8, 2004 9:15 PMGood Lord, don't let 'em find out you'r a carrier for bean sprouts!
I believe I am ineligible to give blood for having had a transfusion within the past 23 years, though I would have been ineligible anyway because of my huge intakes of drugs.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at January 8, 2004 9:29 PM