IS MAD COW DISEASE A MYTH?
AFTER £3.5billion, three million dead cattle and farmers facing ruin, scientists now claim CJD is curable - and has nothing to do with cows....... SHOCK REPORT.
The human form of mad cow disease is probably curable and has nothing to do with infected beef, according to one of Britains' leading scientists. Professor Alan Ebringer believes that Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease could be a severe form of multiple sclerosis. If he is right, Britain has wasted £3.5billion spent on the BSE crisis, unnecessarily slaughtered nearly three million cattle, and driven hundreds of farmers to despair as the beef industry was brought to its knees.
Forty five people have contracted so called new-variant CJD in Britain and 39 of these have died. Current medical practice is to treat the symptoms with anti depressants and other drugs, but the disease is assumed to be incurable. Ebringer, Professor of Immunology at Kings College Hospital, London, has been awarded more than £217,000 by the Ministry of Agriculture to test his controversial theory.
The ministry says that the Government is keen to provide funding for alternative BSE theories and has spent a total of £13million so far investigating the disease. Prof Ebringer says that CJD is not caused by eating meat from BSE-infected cattle, but is caused by the bodys' reaction to a common bacterial infection. If the results are positive - and Ebringer says he should know for sure within a year - it would explain what he says are some of the most puzzling facts about the BSE-CJD crisis; Why vegetarians can catch CJD; why CJD is on the rise in the US, which has been BSE-free for years; and why CJD is common among farm workers, even in countries which have never had a BSE problem.
Prof Ebringer will examine brain tissue from 1,000 cows that died of BSE, to see if they show signs of infection by a micro-organism - something he has already seen in a small sample of 29 cattle. He has now applied for further funding to test brain samples from humans who have died of CJD, to prove his claim that the two diseases are both caused by the same bacteria.
In 1997, Stanley Prusiner, an American scientist, won the Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on prions - proteins which he said caused both BSE in cattle and the brain-wasting disease CJD in humans - a theory that Prof Ebringer rejects as "totally implausible." Ebringer says that prions - which according to Prusiner behave rather like viruses, replicating in the brain causing a massive chain reaction - could not be responsible for either disease. Since the prion theory gained acceptance, the beef industry has lost billions of pounds worth of foreign exports and 2.7million cattle have been culled. If Prof Ebringer is right, then the near-destruction of the British beef industry would have all been completely pointless.
Ebringer, a 63-year-old Australian who came to Britain in 1970, has often been a thorn in the side of the scientific establishment. In 1985 he published a paper showing that rheumatoid arthritis was an "autoimmune" disease triggered by a bacterial infection - a theory still rejected by many immunologists. He is a qualified physician as well as an academic, and lectures to medical students at Saint Bartholomews' Hospital in London. He says the true cause of both BSE and CJD is not a prion but a bacterium, called Acinetobacter, which lives in soil and contaminated water, faeces, sewage and farm slurry. This germ, he claims, is picked up from contaminated water or food, and proliferates in body cavities such as the sinuses. It then causes the body to turn its immune system in upon itself, destroying brain cells in the process and causing the characteristic "sponginess" of both BSE and CJD. Prof Ebringer says that the symptoms of multiple sclerosis, which include psychiatric disturbances, memory loss and "spongy" brain degeneration, are so similar to CJD that the two conditions are probably the same "autoimmune" disease. After examining blood samples from 50 multiple sclerosis patients, he says that they had exactly the same signs of Acinetobacter infection as the BSE cattle and the small number of samples taken from CJD victims. "We are suggesting that CJD is, probably, simply a severe form of multiple sclerosis, and at least that this must be tested." he says. This theory was not yet proven but he called for more research to find a link between BSE, CJD and MS. He said that CJD patients should be treated with large doses of antibiotics, plus drainage of body cavities like the sinuses where the bacteria are likely to be concentrated. At present, CJD appears to be invariably fatal and "new-variant CJD" has killed more than three dozen Britons in recent years. If Prof Ebringer is proved correct, this would explain puzzling facts about CJD. He points out that several long-term vegetarians have contracted CJD, including Clare Tomkins, 24, who died last year. She had not touched meat for 13 years. It also explains, Ebringer says, why cases of CJD are on the increase in the US, despite the country having been BSE-free for years., and it explains the prevalence of CJD among farm workers. "CJD is common among farmers even in countries with no BSE", Prof Ebringer said. "They probably contract it from soil and contaminated water - just like the cattle."
His theory has met with scepticism among other scientists. Simon Cousins, a senior lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and an expert on CJD, said he would take some convincing that the prion theory was incorrect. "He is probably in a very small minority" he said. "He has to somehow explain the epidemiological patterns of BSE, why it appeared when it did and disappeared when it did, and why we have these new diseases in humans 10 years after the appearance of BSE."
Dr James Ironside, a consultant neuropathologist at the CJD surveilance unit in Edinburgh, said that although Ebringers' findings were "interesting", the idea that CJD was an autoimmune disease "is not supported by the evidence," but Clive Evers, chairman of the CJD Support Network, a London-based charity which provides victims and their families with medical advice and help, said he supported the grant given to Prof Ebringer. "Victims need to know how this happened, whether they caught this from eating something. If his research can provide an answer, it will be time and money well spent" he said.
Prof Ebringer said that it was impossible to pick up the Acinetobacter infection from eating meat - even offal from infected cattle - unless it had been contaminated by faeces and was not cooked. "I never stopped eating beef because I knew it was nonsense from the beginning" said Ebringer. "There's going to be no plague of CJD."
DAILY EXPRESS OPINION : The story of BSE has been one long catalogue of disasters. The latest research suggests that CJD is not in fact caused by BSE. This means that CJD could be curable. Scientists, politicians, advisers, and just about everyone connected with the whole wretched business have let us all down since BSE first surfaced. Whether the result of a cock-up or a conspiracy, it is the public - and the farmers - who have suffered. (comment from Val: also the cattle). If it is indeed true that CJD is not caused by BSE and might be curable then we can, on one level, be immensely relieved, but on another, we should all be angry at the sheer incompetence of those responsible for the wasted billions of pounds and pointless slaughter of cattle. The scientists responsible for this latest theory are leaders in their fields. Their research should be tested to the full, with no expense spared. Then heads should roll.
A VICTIMS STORY: The father of a CJD victim has welcomed the Governments' £250,000 award for research which could prove BSE was never a threat to humans. Arthur Beyless, whose 24-year-old daughter Pamela died from CJD, said it could finally put his mind at rest. Milkman Mr Beyless said: "I am pleased the Government has awared the money. I support any research that could finally reveal why my daughter died. I haven't got a clue how she caught CJD or why she died. It could have been from eating beef or something entirely different - something silly, even. Pamela ate beef, but so did the rest of the family - so why did she die while we did not have any effects?" Mr Beyless, 51, added: "Obviously if they are proven right it means money has been wasted protecting people from beef, but what price is a human life? All I know is that the disease Pamela caught was something found in cattle, but I hope these scientists can now find out exactly what the link is."
Pamela contracted the new variant of Creuzfeld-Jakob Disease in 1997 and was not expected to survive beyond the summer of that year. Once "fun-loving, bubbly and ambitious" she gradually lost the power of speech and, in her fathers' words, became a prisoner in her own body. Arthur and his wife June provided round-the-clock care for their daughter and made sure she lived in comfort for as long as possible. She died last October, days after her 24th birthday, after she started having difficulty breathing at home in Glenfield, Leicester.
Despite the chance that the new research could prove her death had nothing to do with food, Mr Beyless insisted he would never eat beef again. He admitted "If the research is successful then it would put millions of peoples' minds at rest., but it would just not seem right to eat beef. We as a family have gone away from eating it over the past few years. "It is produced in an unnatural way, because I am aware that cows are being fed cows. That is not natural. A human wouldn't eat another human."
COMMENT FROM VAL: Mr Beyless has hit the nail on the head with his last sentence; and it is time we all showed more respect to animals. We do not NEED to eat meat to survive!
SOME MORE FACTS ABOUT BSE.....
The bill for fighting BSE is £3.5billion - or nearly two pence on income tax.
More than 4.8million cattle and calves have been killed since May 1996 and kept out of the food chain as a precaution
Beef sales dropped by 27 per cent in March 1997 when the Government announced a possible link between BSE and new variant CJD
Prices for live animals at market plunged from £1.18 per kg to as low as 79 pence per kg
The global ban on exporting UK beef is still effectively in place except in Northern Ireland
Ten thousand jobs have been lost in businesses dependent on beef, like abattoirs and livestock hauliers
In the past year alolng more than 10 livestock markets have shut down due to the general farming crisis
The BSE crisis has been blamed for a spate of suicides among farmers who are already twice as likely to kill themselves as the average man
More and more farmers are relying on other activities like tourism and trucking to make ends meet. More and more farmers' wives are working off the farm
The Governments BSE inquiry is expected to cost about £25million and is unlikely to report for another year after missing two deadlines
Up to £50million in taxpayers' money has been spent reseaching into BSE
Made in England
25/08/05
