X-Message-Number: 6032
From:  (RHA)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Mad Cows & Englishmen
Date: 1 Apr 1996 19:30:54 -0600
Message-ID: <4jq00e$>
References: <4jo9e0$>

In article <4jo9e0$>,
Steven B. Harris <> wrote:
[cut]
>In fact, the parallels between the last few years of
>suggestions that the U.K. beef supply was contaminated with
>an infectious slow agent, and the suggestions in 1983 
>and 1984 that the blood supply was contaminated similarly,
>are striking.  In both cases, economic considerations 
>won out over common sense in the first years, with people
>refusing to believe they were at risk until other people
>started to die.  Common sense is not that common.  The
>prion agent responsible for these encephalopathies crosses
>between an incredible range of hosts, including from
>mammals to birds.  The idea that humans would be 
>somehow immune (especially since we have transmissable
>prion diseases of our own) is really stupid.  And you
>read this opinion in the pages of CRYONICS 
>magazine years ago, so this is not just 20-20 
>hindsight.  But that seems to have been the official 
>hope in Britain.  Perhaps they should read cryonics 
>literature more there.
> 

During one of the televised discussions of this disease,
a speaker brought up a US counterpart: "Falling Cow
Disease". (I believe Sixty Minutes did a segment but
from a cruelty to animals point of view. They showed a
cow being dragged along the ground on a rope because 
it couldn't walk into the slaughterhouse.) Are you
familar with this syndrome? It appears in US cattle 
which also have been fed sheep and cattle parts just 
like the UK cattle. I'm thinking we may not be as safe 
as we wish to think. 
-- 
rha


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