See info on him on my BSE pages
http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/bse.htm
he was right on!
Sheri
>From: "JULIE GRIFFITHS" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>The article fails to mention that Mark's work was indeed replicated by an
American university around 2 years ago. If I remember correctly, the team
was able to produce Mad Cow through pesticides and altering mineral content
in the animal feed.
Obituary from The Daily Telegraph, Sat. 18 Nov. 2006, page 27
"Mark Purdey - Exmoor farmer who mounted a passionate one-man campaign
claiming BSE was caused by pesticides."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/news/2006
/11/18/db1802.xml
Mark Purdey
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 18/11/2006
Mark Purdey, who has died aged 52, was a maverick farmer who argued that
BSE, or mad cow disease, was caused by chemicals and not contaminated
cattle feed; his efforts to challenge the Government, the chemical industry
and the British scientific establishment, although unavailing, were widely
admired, with a former cabinet minister, Tom King, hailing Purdey's
"classic piece of scientific investigation".
The command post for his one-man campaign was Purdey's remote organic farm
on Exmoor, where he raised a herd of pedigree Jersey cattle, immersed
himself in the mysteries of organic chemistry, and pondered a sinister
series of misfortunes that persuaded him that he and his campaign had been
jinxed.
A shambling, scarecrow-like figure who cared little about his appearance,
Purdey was regarded by his critics as a deranged, dangerous agitator, and
by his admirers as an enlightened and inspired visionary sleuth. But his
passionate belief that pesticides on farms were causing, and contributing
to, BSE, and posed a grave threat to human health, was subsequently shown
to be misplaced; his theory failed to withstand scientific scrutiny, a fact
that Purdey himself could never bring himself to admit.
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John Mark Purdey was born on Christmas Day 1953 at Much Hadham,
Hertfordshire. He was descended from a long line of gifted eccentrics an
ancestor walked from Inverness to London to launch the Purdey shotgun firm;
his grandfather, Lionel, was shell-shocked during the First World War and
lobbied Lord Kitchener to recognise the condition as a genuine illness
which should be treated accordingly.
Expelled from Haileybury for post-A-level high jinks, Purdey was accepted
to read Zoology at London University but instead went to Ireland to
establish an organic farming community, later moving to Pembrokeshire.
As a birdwatcher in boyhood, Purdey had witnessed the quivering death of a
blackbird in a field that had just been sprayed with pesticide; he remained
haunted by the image, convinced that the use of such chemicals derived
from military nerve gas was tantamount to detonating a toxic bomb, with
incalculable poisonous side-effects.
In 1984, when the Ministry of Agriculture ordered him to treat his cattle
with a systemic organophosphate (OP) treatment for warble fly, Purdey
refused to comply, took his case to the High Court and won. Finding himself
front page news, he was swamped by letters from other farmers who suspected
that OP treatments had ruined their health.
Although untrained, Purdey studied the science, becoming convinced that OPs
were also the root cause of BSE in cattle. Moreover, he discovered that,
compared with other countries, cattle in Britain had been given
exceptionally high doses of systemic OP (phosmet). With the government
blaming BSE on contaminated meat and bone meal feed, Purdey questioned why
the disease had not occurred in countries which had imported the same feed
from Britain.
The tide of public opinion started to turn Purdey's way following his BBC
television documentary about OPs and human health, screened in 1988: the
then Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes, wrote offering "a million congratulations".
But following his family's move from Wales to the west country, Purdey
began to be blighted by mysterious circumstance: someone started firing
guns over his property and blocked his driveway with a lorry; Doberman dogs
were unleashed to chase his cows. After they had decided to sell up, the
Purdeys' new farmhouse was burnt down the night before they moved, driving
them into hiding.
Purdey's farm vet died in a mysterious car crash, echoing the strange death
of his solicitor, who unaccountably lost control of his car and hit a wall;
phone lines to his farm were vandalised, and there were other similar,
unexplained, incidents.
These continued into 1994, when the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and
Food (MAFF) invited Purdey to London for talks about his theory, which by
then was gaining ground, especially abroad. Summoned to meet the EU farm
commissioner Franz Fischler, Purdey was disappointed to be fobbed off
because, according to Fischler, his (Purdey's) work had not been
peer-reviewed.
In 1997, funded by well-wishers, Purdey commissioned scientific trials
which showed that phosmet did increase susceptibility to BSE, a finding
which prompted the Government to announce that it would finance research
into Purdey's BSE theory. But it never happened: none of his proposals
attracted funding, his ideas remained unresearched, and financial support
from the public believing the Government had stepped in with grant aid
ebbed away.
In the end Purdey's hypothesis was rejected not only by the BSE inquiry led
by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers but also by the subsequent expert
committee headed by Professor Gabriel Horn, of Cambridge University, which
concluded that the BSE epidemic had been caused by feeding infected sheep
remains to calves.
Mark Purdey, who died of a brain tumour on November 12, married, in 1974,
Carol MacDonald, with whom he had a son and a daughter; the marriage was
dissolved, and he married, secondly, Margaret Urwin, with whom he had two
sons and four daughters.
