Post by Mech on Nov 18, 2003 2:47:19 GMT -5
Apocalypse Proteins: Part I
Mad Cows, Deer and Men
by Geri Guidetti
The Ark Institute www.arkinstitute.com
Email: arkinst@concentric.net
An apocalypse, according to Webster's New World Dictionary, is "a disclosure regarded as prophetic; a revelation." The more specifically religious definition of the word includes both Jewish and Christian writings "…depicting symbolically the ultimate destruction of evil and triumph of good." Examples would be the Book of Revelation or the writings of the prophet, Isaiah.
Prophetic revelations often come from unexpected sources--a newborn child, for example. Right now, there is a very sick, 11-month old baby girl in Great Britain who will likely be credited with having created an apocalypse. You see, according to the British newspaper, The Telegraph, this suffering child is believed to be the first case of blood-transmitted (in utero) New Variant Creutzeld-Jacob Disease, nvCJD, the human version of mad cow disease (BSE). The baby's 22-year old mother died seven months after giving birth. A post-mortem confirmed the cause of the young woman's death was nvCJD.
In mid-September, the baby was about half the size of a normal infant her age and was diagnosed with brain damage soon after birth. Doctors told her grandmother they suspect that some of the prions, the infectious proteins that appear to cause nvCJD, had passed from mother to child across the placenta via blood, and caused her brain damage. Up until now, only the eating of infected beef was the official, government- sanctioned explanation for contraction of human mad cow. Up until now, the mean incubation time of nvCJD was believed to be about 10.5 years after eating infected beef. In fact, the growing number of teenagers and young twenties now dead or dying of the disease in Britain are thought to have become infected through school lunches or meat supplies in their home villages. Yet, there is now growing laboratory evidence that nvCJD may be transmitted by blood as well, and that more--many, many more--people and animals may be infected with the disease than was originally thought.
This laboratory evidence, coupled with the revelation of a birth of a child who is now exhibiting multiple nvCJD symptoms with virtually no incubation period and, of course, no history of beef-eating, has the potential of revealing that what was already considered a bad situation is, in reality, an impending global nightmare. In Part I of this series on Apocalypse Proteins, I will attempt to summarize some of the key points of what we know --and don't know--about mad cow disease (BSE), CJD, vCJD, nvCJD and other prion protein diseases. In Part II we'll look in greater depth at the causes of these emerging prion protein plagues, and try to answer the question, "How do we control and "kill" this thing?" Then, in Part III, we'll look at other proteins that may unexpectedly threaten human survival.
What do we know, and when did we know it? Here's a brief summary of some of the accumulating data:
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, BSE or, dubbed by the British as Mad Cow Disease, is an always-fatal, progressive central nervous system disease identified in the UK in cattle in 1986. Over the course of the disease, large holes or vacuoles are formed in brain tissue giving it the appearance of a sponge. Severe neurological symptoms in afflicted animals gave them the appearance of having gone "mad." Europe has been rocked by daily accounts of new cases of both cow and human forms of this disease. It is now spreading across the continent.
Epidemiologists have discovered a connection between BSE and scrapie or "mad sheep disease", a similar, fatal affliction in sheep. Scrapie has been present in UK sheep for over 200 years. In 1934, a UK vaccine catastrophe occurred when scrapie was spread to nearly 5 thousand of eighteen thousand lambs vaccinated with scrapie-contaminated vaccine. Further studies determined that scrapie could spread naturally from ewe to lamb, and from lamb to lamb via vaccination. The data was not published for 15 years! In 1947, with the help of man, a scrapie-infected food supplement "jumped species" and brought a similar disease to farm-raised mink. Today, it is believed that scrapie once again" jumped species," with British assistance, and became BSE or mad cow disease when remnants of butchered, diseased sheep were ground up and turned into feed and protein supplements for cattle.
When cattle started to die of a strange new neurological disease, they were butchered for human consumption, and remaining parts of the carcasses were ground up and turned into food for still more cattle and other animals.
In 1987 there were 446 BSE cases in the UK. In 1991, 25359 cases. By 1992, the peak year, so far, there were 37280.. By 1994, the new cases had dropped to 24436. By 1996, 8149, and through November 11th this year, there were 1067 new cases.
Through last week, the UK has reported a total of 180,323 BSE cases, more than 50% of the dairy herds in the UK, since recognition of the deadly disease. Throughout the rest of Europe, exclusive of the UK, there have been 1578 cases before this week's latest, increasing numbers from France and Italy. More about these, later. Canada and Oman have each had one confirmed case. Through the CDC and USDA, the U.S. officially reports no BSE cases to date.
Throughout the most severe years of the epidemic, British government and health officials insisted there was no risk to human health from eating meat from BSE -infected herds. On March 21, 1996, 10 cases of CJD were officially reported in the UK. A naturally occurring, Sporadic CJD, occurs worldwide, including in the U.S. and Australia, in about 1 in 1 million people each year. Nearly all of these are 63 years of age or older. This frequency has remained constant for many years. The ages of the10 new victims of CJD average 27, and the pathological changes in their brain tissue were different than Sporadic CJD. These 10 novel cases, the tip of an emerging iceberg of still undetermined size, represented the first reported new variant CJD, nvCJD, the human form of mad cow disease.
CJD has also been transmitted in health care settings (Iatrogenic CJD.) It has been spread by "sterilized" neurosurgical instruments. It has been transmitted via cornea and dura mater grafts. Human pituitary growth hormone treatment of short-statured children up until 1985 continued despite warnings that the hormone was possibly a source of the agent that causes CJD. By 1985, the first four children infected with CJD via growth hormone had appeared. Injection programs were immediately halted in most countries, though France continued. By 1996 there were 90 cases of growth hormone caused CJD, and half of these were in France according to……
…Australia's Dr. Lynette Dumble, a Senior Research Fellow at University of Melbourne's Department of Surgery, who claims that another hormone, human pituitary gonadotrophin, has also knowingly been injected into infertile women during the same time period. She says that records of these patients were "less than complete" and that "…just three years after the first cases of pituitary growth hormone-related CJD, the National Institutes of Health in the United States prematurely assumed in 1988 that the short-term nature of the gonadotrophin treatment precluded any risk of contracting CJD, and set about shredding the records of infertile women treated by some 250 gynecologists over the previous 15 years." In 1989, the first of these injected women, a forty-year old Australian woman, contracted CJD. By 1993 there were three more in Australia, all within a year or two of forty. Officially, 300 infertile British women received the injections, but infertility personnel indicate the numbers were likely much larger. Dr. Dumble says that the issue for American, German and Scandinavian women "has scarcely been touched." She points out that these real and potential CJD cases could have been contained, but that these women may already have passed on their legacy to their children--and to the general blood supply.
Mad Cows, Deer and Men
by Geri Guidetti
The Ark Institute www.arkinstitute.com
Email: arkinst@concentric.net
An apocalypse, according to Webster's New World Dictionary, is "a disclosure regarded as prophetic; a revelation." The more specifically religious definition of the word includes both Jewish and Christian writings "…depicting symbolically the ultimate destruction of evil and triumph of good." Examples would be the Book of Revelation or the writings of the prophet, Isaiah.
Prophetic revelations often come from unexpected sources--a newborn child, for example. Right now, there is a very sick, 11-month old baby girl in Great Britain who will likely be credited with having created an apocalypse. You see, according to the British newspaper, The Telegraph, this suffering child is believed to be the first case of blood-transmitted (in utero) New Variant Creutzeld-Jacob Disease, nvCJD, the human version of mad cow disease (BSE). The baby's 22-year old mother died seven months after giving birth. A post-mortem confirmed the cause of the young woman's death was nvCJD.
In mid-September, the baby was about half the size of a normal infant her age and was diagnosed with brain damage soon after birth. Doctors told her grandmother they suspect that some of the prions, the infectious proteins that appear to cause nvCJD, had passed from mother to child across the placenta via blood, and caused her brain damage. Up until now, only the eating of infected beef was the official, government- sanctioned explanation for contraction of human mad cow. Up until now, the mean incubation time of nvCJD was believed to be about 10.5 years after eating infected beef. In fact, the growing number of teenagers and young twenties now dead or dying of the disease in Britain are thought to have become infected through school lunches or meat supplies in their home villages. Yet, there is now growing laboratory evidence that nvCJD may be transmitted by blood as well, and that more--many, many more--people and animals may be infected with the disease than was originally thought.
This laboratory evidence, coupled with the revelation of a birth of a child who is now exhibiting multiple nvCJD symptoms with virtually no incubation period and, of course, no history of beef-eating, has the potential of revealing that what was already considered a bad situation is, in reality, an impending global nightmare. In Part I of this series on Apocalypse Proteins, I will attempt to summarize some of the key points of what we know --and don't know--about mad cow disease (BSE), CJD, vCJD, nvCJD and other prion protein diseases. In Part II we'll look in greater depth at the causes of these emerging prion protein plagues, and try to answer the question, "How do we control and "kill" this thing?" Then, in Part III, we'll look at other proteins that may unexpectedly threaten human survival.
What do we know, and when did we know it? Here's a brief summary of some of the accumulating data:
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, BSE or, dubbed by the British as Mad Cow Disease, is an always-fatal, progressive central nervous system disease identified in the UK in cattle in 1986. Over the course of the disease, large holes or vacuoles are formed in brain tissue giving it the appearance of a sponge. Severe neurological symptoms in afflicted animals gave them the appearance of having gone "mad." Europe has been rocked by daily accounts of new cases of both cow and human forms of this disease. It is now spreading across the continent.
Epidemiologists have discovered a connection between BSE and scrapie or "mad sheep disease", a similar, fatal affliction in sheep. Scrapie has been present in UK sheep for over 200 years. In 1934, a UK vaccine catastrophe occurred when scrapie was spread to nearly 5 thousand of eighteen thousand lambs vaccinated with scrapie-contaminated vaccine. Further studies determined that scrapie could spread naturally from ewe to lamb, and from lamb to lamb via vaccination. The data was not published for 15 years! In 1947, with the help of man, a scrapie-infected food supplement "jumped species" and brought a similar disease to farm-raised mink. Today, it is believed that scrapie once again" jumped species," with British assistance, and became BSE or mad cow disease when remnants of butchered, diseased sheep were ground up and turned into feed and protein supplements for cattle.
When cattle started to die of a strange new neurological disease, they were butchered for human consumption, and remaining parts of the carcasses were ground up and turned into food for still more cattle and other animals.
In 1987 there were 446 BSE cases in the UK. In 1991, 25359 cases. By 1992, the peak year, so far, there were 37280.. By 1994, the new cases had dropped to 24436. By 1996, 8149, and through November 11th this year, there were 1067 new cases.
Through last week, the UK has reported a total of 180,323 BSE cases, more than 50% of the dairy herds in the UK, since recognition of the deadly disease. Throughout the rest of Europe, exclusive of the UK, there have been 1578 cases before this week's latest, increasing numbers from France and Italy. More about these, later. Canada and Oman have each had one confirmed case. Through the CDC and USDA, the U.S. officially reports no BSE cases to date.
Throughout the most severe years of the epidemic, British government and health officials insisted there was no risk to human health from eating meat from BSE -infected herds. On March 21, 1996, 10 cases of CJD were officially reported in the UK. A naturally occurring, Sporadic CJD, occurs worldwide, including in the U.S. and Australia, in about 1 in 1 million people each year. Nearly all of these are 63 years of age or older. This frequency has remained constant for many years. The ages of the10 new victims of CJD average 27, and the pathological changes in their brain tissue were different than Sporadic CJD. These 10 novel cases, the tip of an emerging iceberg of still undetermined size, represented the first reported new variant CJD, nvCJD, the human form of mad cow disease.
CJD has also been transmitted in health care settings (Iatrogenic CJD.) It has been spread by "sterilized" neurosurgical instruments. It has been transmitted via cornea and dura mater grafts. Human pituitary growth hormone treatment of short-statured children up until 1985 continued despite warnings that the hormone was possibly a source of the agent that causes CJD. By 1985, the first four children infected with CJD via growth hormone had appeared. Injection programs were immediately halted in most countries, though France continued. By 1996 there were 90 cases of growth hormone caused CJD, and half of these were in France according to……
…Australia's Dr. Lynette Dumble, a Senior Research Fellow at University of Melbourne's Department of Surgery, who claims that another hormone, human pituitary gonadotrophin, has also knowingly been injected into infertile women during the same time period. She says that records of these patients were "less than complete" and that "…just three years after the first cases of pituitary growth hormone-related CJD, the National Institutes of Health in the United States prematurely assumed in 1988 that the short-term nature of the gonadotrophin treatment precluded any risk of contracting CJD, and set about shredding the records of infertile women treated by some 250 gynecologists over the previous 15 years." In 1989, the first of these injected women, a forty-year old Australian woman, contracted CJD. By 1993 there were three more in Australia, all within a year or two of forty. Officially, 300 infertile British women received the injections, but infertility personnel indicate the numbers were likely much larger. Dr. Dumble says that the issue for American, German and Scandinavian women "has scarcely been touched." She points out that these real and potential CJD cases could have been contained, but that these women may already have passed on their legacy to their children--and to the general blood supply.