Mad Cow Disease: The Chemical Industry Plays Dirty
BY DR. PAUL KAIL
ACTIVISM | 01.17.01
BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy), or Mad Cow Disease, and its human
form, nvCJD (New Variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease), are incurable brain
disorders. Holes appear in victims' brains, then they become demented and
die. The diseases are not caused by a virus or a bacterium, but by a
mysterious type of twisted protein, known as a "prion". The prion can
propagate itself by causing other proteins to twist into the same shape.
Prions can be passed on by eating the flesh of another animal, and are
resistant to cooking and digestion. A theory about how prions are formed
suggests that organophosphate pesticides could be partly to blame. Two people
have already died defending this theory, apparently at the hands of
professional assassins working either for the British government or the
chemical industry. So the theory needs to be taken seriously. BSE first
appeared in the UK in 1985. Since then, the disease has affected half of the
cow herds in the country. New Variant CJD also first appeared in the UK, ten
years later: to date, around 90 people have died from it. Both BSE and CDJ
are beginning to spread throughout the rest of Europe; today, 30 European
countries have had exports of their cattle banned. The diseases have the
potential to destroy the entire European cattle industry, and kill thousands
of people. The death toll from nvCJD is increasing by 35% per year, and the
disease has a gestation period of twenty years. Some projections suggest that
hundreds of thousands of people could eventually die from it. Given the huge
amount at stake, one might expect that any credible theory would be welcomed.
Yet Mark Purdey, a British farmer from Somerset, has suffered constant
harassment and has had to support his research from his own pocket. Purdey
has a theory which might explain the mystery of why BSE and new variant nvCJD
started in the UK, and why they are so much more serious there. However,
since he went public with his ideas, some rather unfortunate things have
happened:
Both his vet and the lawyer defending his case died in suspicious road
accidents. His second lawyer also had a car crash, but survived.
When an article about his work appeared in the "Independent", a national
British newspaper, his telephone lines were cut. He was therefore unable to
take follow up calls from other papers and television stations.
His farm house was burnt down just before he was about to move in.
His science library was destroyed by a collapsing barn.
When he travels around the country to talk about his theory, he is constantly
trailed. Purdey believes that the root cause of BSE is an imbalance of
magnesium and copper, exacerbated, in the case of the UK, by the use of a
highly toxic pesticide known as phosmet. Phosphet is an organophosphate nerve
toxin, originally developed by the Nazis. It is also related to the drug
Thalidamide, which causes birth defects. Phosmet is made by Zeneca, a
subdivision of the British chemical giant ICI. A week after the British
government first announced the link between BSE and nvCJD, Zeneca sold the
patent for phosmet to a PO Box company in Arizona, apparently to avoid
potential legal action. The theory started when Purdey noticed that his cows,
unlike those of his neighbours, were not getting BSE. Cows often suffer from
a parasitic infection known as warble fly. Since Purdey is an organic farmer,
he treated his herd with derris root powder, a natural remedy. Other farmers
were using phosmet, which was later made compulsory throughout the UK. When
Purdey bought an infected cow from another herd, he was able to reduce the
symptoms of BSE by injecting oxime, which is an antidote to pesticide
poisoning. However, officials from MAFF (the Ministry for Agriculture,
Fisheries and Food) turned up to kill the cow before the experiment could be
completed. As well as the link to phosmet use, Purdey discovered that brain
diseases such as BSE and nvCJD appear in clusters in many places around the
world. The link seems to be a lack of copper and an excess of manganese. For
example, in some areas of Colorado and Wyoming, 4-6% of deer and elk suffer
from CWD (Chronic Wasting Disease), which is related to nvCJD. These animals
live in areas where the soils are very high in manganese. In Slovakia, where
the incidence of nvCJD is a thousand times higher than normal, most of the
victims live near a glass making plant (where manganese is used) or else
down-wind of one of two large ferro-manganese factories. In the UK, two
factors have increased the amount of manganese which cows consume. Until
1988, cows were fed chicken manure. The chicken had been fed manganese to
strengthen their eggs, but 98% of it ended up in the manure. In addition, a
fungicide rich in manganese was used on crops at that time. According to
Purdey, a lack of copper and an excess of manganese causes proteins in the
nervous system of foetal cattle to change into the abnormal prion forms found
in BSE and nvCJD. Phosmet facilitates this process by binding to copper, and
therefore reducing the amount available to brain tissues. Recently, Dr David
Brown, a chemist at Cambridge University, showed that manganese can replace
copper in brain proteins, thereby transforming them into prions. Dr Brown
lost his funding, and was not able to continue the research. The BSE crisis
started in the UK, and that country still has the highest rate of the
disease. Purdey believes that this was because the British government was the
only one to enforce systemic phosmet at such a high dose. Phosmet is used
elsewhere, but either on a voluntary basis, or at a much lower dose, or
non-systemically. However, there is a long lag between the peak of phosmet
use and the incidence of BSE. Purdey says that this is for two reasons.
First, cows are most susceptible to phosmet damage when they are in the womb.
Second, phosmet has to reach a certain concentration in the food-chain before
it has an effect. Quite apart from the direct attacks on Mr Purdey, the
chemical industry have launched a media campaign to discredit his research.
Although MAFF claims that any credible theories for BSE will receive funding,
Purdey has received nothing. The effort that the chemical industry has
apparently gone to to discredit Mark Purdey mirrors the experiences of Alice
Stewart, the scientist who first showed the link between radiation and
cancer. Scientists who supported her had their cars rammed. Maybe in this
case as well, the truth will come out in the end.
Dr. Paul Kail has a Ph.D. in nueroscience from Cambridge University and is
founder and Director of the Animal Consciousness Foundation, which can be
reached via www.animals.org.
