March
1995
Nothing
to Worry About: BS and BSE
By Howard Lyman
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You may have heard recently about a disease currently
rampant in Great Britain called Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE),
commonly known as mad cow disease. Since its discovery in the mid 1980s,
thousands upon thousands of cattle have died or been slaughtered because
of this disease.
BSE is an infection which turns a cow’s brain into a porous sponge.
She froths at the mouth, loses control of her limbs, exhibits very erratic
behavior, and dies. We know that as early as the 1600s in England the
disease, called scrapie, was present in sheep. Its virulence can be
measured by the fact that, if we took a pasture in England that had
had nothing on it but sheep and then grazed cows on it from a herd that
had never had any history of having mad cow disease, the transmitting
agent in the grass would still be transferred to the cows. During the
early 1980s, cattle farmers began feeding sheep-brain infected with
scrapie to cattle. The results were catastrophic. Despite the length
of time this feeding method went on — the British government stopped
the practice only a few years ago — governments and scientists
have been telling us ever since this outbreak occurred that there is
nothing to worry about.
First of all they told us that BSE was a very slow growing virus. But
people began looking into the disease and discovered that the 800,000
animals which had died of this disease were not killed by a ‘virus’
or ‘bacteria,’ for this disease had no DNA. The scientists
are now calling BSE a prion, a protein gone mad; it is a protein moreover
which will survive heat of up to 340 degrees centigrade — a temperature
at which this building would be turned into ash.
Then we were informed that it was impossible to pass BSE from one animal
to another, despite the evidence of scrapie. In England, however, cows
infected with BSE who were fed to zoo animals passed the BSE on, as
did infected cows fed to dogs and cats. Again, we were told there was
nothing to worry about, and that it certainly couldn’t be passed
on to humans. But, believe it or not, a dairy farmer in England, who
had been eating meat and dairy from his own infected herd, came down
with the human form of mad cow disease: Creuzfeld-Jakob Disease (CJD)
— named after the people who first identified it.
Again came the soothing words: “nothing to worry about.” That
a dairy farmer came down with the disease was mere coincidence, we
were told: a one-in-a-million shot. But a second dairy farmer was
infected, and the odds of getting the disease fell to one in a hundred
thousand. Now you would think that the odds of getting CJD standing
at one in a million would only mean 250 cases in the United States.
But when the University of Pittsburgh Veterans Hospital removed the
brains of 54 people who had died of dementia and put them under the
microscope, they found that 5.5% of them had CJD. If that rate is normal
and not a cluster, it means we have underestimated the possible cases
of this disease by 1000 times.
Crossing the Atlantic
If you think that BSE is an English problem, think again. About eight
months ago, there occurred the first case of mad cow disease in Canada.
Once more, we were told were was no problem. That cow — who had
come from England, by the way — did not infect any other cow or
the herd base. So confident were they this was true, that the government
killed all 270 of the farmer’s herd and burnt their bodies, promising
they would find every cow with the disease, kill her, and burn her.
So much for Canada: but it’s not in the United States, is it?
Well, in the United States something strange is happening. Every year,
farmers are finding around 100,000 cows who are fine at night and dead
the next morning. This phenomenon is called Downer Cow Syndrome. The
causes are unknown, but the results are predictable. When a farmer has
a dead cow, he has two choices. He can call the veterinarian who will
come out and say, “Hey, Jack, you gotta dead cow. You owe me $150.”
Or the farmer can call the renderer who will come out and say, “Hey,
Jack, you gotta dead cow. I can take it off your hands.” Which
is he going to choose? The renderer makes cows into feed, which is
then
fed back to cows or other animals. In this way, one dead cow with BSE
could infect thousands.
One of those other animals they feed cows to is mink. There have been
cases of six or seven hundred mink going crazy, running around, falling
over, and dying. Somebody made the bright observation that the minks’
behavior looked a lot like mad cow disease. Therefore, at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison, scientists removed the fluid of brains of infected
mink and placed it in a couple of Holstein bull calves and waited for
the cows to go mad, stagger around, and die. Eighteen months later,
the Holsteins just fell over dead. They removed their brains and put
them under a microscope, and sure enough they had BSE, even though — of
course — there were still no cases of the disease in the
United States.
And us?
But what about the human form of BSE — CJD? In the South Sea islands,
cannibals believed that by eating the brain of another human being you
could see the future. Sure enough, the future was a disease startlingly
similar to mad cow disease called Kuru. CJD bears many similarities
to Alzheimer’s and Kuru. It is, unfortunately, undetectable.
Like mad cow disease, there is no test as to whether you have it without
having your brain removed and put under a microscope.
What we know about CJD is that from the time you’re infected to
the time you die is on average 25 to 30 years. How can we tell it takes
that long when we don’t even know when we have it? Well, in Europe
25 years ago, they injected human growth hormone into people of diminished
growth to see if they would grow. They didn’t; but 25 years later,
some of them began to die. The scientists checked the cadavers of the
patients, and found them infected with CJD. “Wait a minute,”
they said, “the odds of getting this disease are meant to be one
in a million, and here we have one in a hundred.” Just recently,
a 16 year old girl died of CJD, so even the 25-year length of incubation
time may be an over-estimate.
Nothing to worry about?
If someone says to you you have absolutely nothing to worry about from
this disease, do not believe them. When they tell you this thing called
BSE cannot be transferred from one species to another, remember we have
transferred it from sheep to cattle, from cattle to calves, from cattle
to zoo animals, from cattle to dogs and cats. We know that humans can
transfer it to other humans, just through the form of eating.
What we know about mad cow disease would fill a thimble, what we don’t
know would fill the ocean. What I’m sure of, however, is that
for us to continue to feed cows to cows when one cow has the potential
to infect thousands of other cows is absolutely the wrong way to go.
Can you imagine how many people could be infected and 25 to 30 years
from now will just start falling over dead? Yet, in Britain, the Minister
of Agriculture put his four year old daughter on television and told
her to eat a hamburger to show how confident he was in the safety of
meat. I cannot imagine how any parent could do that when you’re
talking about the life of your child. Incidentally, they asked a selection
of the top researchers in this area whether they thought this problem
was going to get better or worse. 100% said they thought it was going
to get worse. And then they asked another question: “Do you still
consume meat?” 98% of them said, “No.”
Now, we can talk about whether human beings are herbivores, or omnivores,
or carnivores for as long as we like. But that is not the point. What
matters most is that there is absolutely no evidence that the cow is
anything other than a herbivore. We have never determined how the cow
passes on BSE to her calf: through the placenta, through her mouth,
or through her milk. With this, and other issues surrounding BSE, we
simply have not spent the money we should have on studies. Instead,
we have spent it on advertising for the beef and dairy industries. For
all we know, BSE could be passed through the blood. If it is, then we
will have a disease on our hands that will make AIDS look like the common
cold.
If we are going to do anything, we have to stand up and say, right
now: “Enough is enough.” I believe there are enough people involved
in the vegetarian and animal rights movement to tell people not that
we have the answers but that we have the right questions. Is it worth
the risk for us to continue what we’re doing — feeding cows
to cows? Shouldn’t we start studying Downer Cow Syndrome as a
harbinger of an epidemic of mad cow disease in the U.S.? Shouldn’t
we start finding out what the odds really are? If there was ever a
time
to err on the side of caution, now is the time to do it. It is up to
us to provide the leadership, because I am concerned that 100 million
Americans could die of this disease through the lack of it. I could
be wrong. I most sincerely hope I am.
Howard Lyman is Executive Director of Voice for
a Viable Future. This article was edited from a speech given at the
World Vegetarian Congress in The Hague, The Netherlands in August 1994.
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