The ill-concealed gloating of the UK media over the appearance of BSE (mad cow disease) in cattle in France and Germany reflects a vain hope that the impact of the panic in Britain may be diminished if it spreads more widely. This week's response by the European Union - a ban on the use of meat and bone meal for animal feeds and the exclusion of cattle over the age of 30 months from the human food chain - will cost Europe's taxpayers more than £3 billion; it will also be a further blow to consumer confidence in beef that will hit British producers as much as those in Europe. It is worth recalling that in 1996, when the panic first erupted in Britain, and European countries responded by banning British beef, sales of beef in Germany, where environmentalist concerns among consumers run high, fell even more sharply than those of Britain.
| In response to the latest eruption of the mad cow panic, it is also worth recalling that, given the high level of scientific ignorance about BSE - and about the related human condition of 'variant' Creuzfeldt Jakob Disease (vCJD) - there is little evidence to justify any of the measures taken to prevent the spread of these diseases. Though there is continuing controversy about every aspect of the theory that BSE and vCJD are prion diseases transmitted by feeding animal products to cattle and hence via beef products to humans, stopping these feeding practices and taking measures to exclude infected beef from the food chain seem
reasonable precautions. However, the usefulness of the mass slaughter of British cattle (nearly five million so far), soon likely to be followed on the continent, remains doubtful.
| Though the idea that vCJD is acquired by eating beef has become widely established, there is, after intensive study of every case, still no evidence to confirm this. There is also no evidence to justify numerous related scares.
| To summarise the studies of the nearly 100 cases in Britain so far, not a single case of vCJD has been shown to have been acquired by any of the following routes:
- eating beef, beefburgers, beef on the bone, any other beef products
- eating lamb
- blood transfusion (several victims of vCJD are known to have been blood donors)
- polio vaccine (made by one company using calf serum from British cattle)
- surgical instruments (infective particles discovered in removed tonsils, appendices)
While politicians and pundits try to use mad cow disease in national trade and political rivalries (some preferring to stir animosities against Ireland rather than against France or Germany), people throughout Europe should take some encouragement from the limited scale of the epidemic in Britain over the past four years. Despite the affinity of many medical and political authorities for doomsday scenarios, cases of vCJD have increased at a rate of less than 20 a year. According to one statistician at the CJD surveillance unit, the disease could have infected only 200 people in the whole population. A rational response to such a rare condition would be to let the scientists get on with their researches and for the rest of us to get on with our lives.
| Dr Michael Fitzpatrick is the author of MMR and Autism, Routledge, 2004 (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)); and The Tyranny of Health: Doctors and the Regulation of Lifestyle, Routledge, 2000 (buy this book from Amazon UK or Amazon USA). He is also a contributor to Alternative Medicine: Should We Swallow It? Hodder Murray, 2002 (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)).
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