-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=117578
}}}>Begin
BSE scientists studied the wrong brains
SCIENTISTS at Edinburgh’s prestigious animal health institute were
under pressure to resign last night after it emerged that a five-year
study into BSE in sheep was wasted because they studied cattle
brains, not sheep brains.
The spectacular blunder, which went unnoticed for five years, now
means that the study to determine whether BSE had spread to the
national sheep flock is worthless.
All the test results will now have to be scrapped, leaving consumers
no nearer to knowing whether it is safe to eat lamb. Last month the
government announced that the national flock would have to be
slaughtered if sheep were found to be infected but now it is
impossible to tell whether that has happened.
Professor Chris Bostock, director of the Institute of Animal Health,
said: "I am flabbergasted, devastated."
Urgent inquiries into the mix-up have been launched at the institute
and at the national Department for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs.
But Margaret Beckett, the agriculture minister, faced demands last night that she
launch a public inquiry and sack the people who were responsible.
The blunder only came to light when samples of the brain material were sent to the
Laboratory of the Government Chemist for DNA analysis.
It meant that results from the study, which took five years and cost £217,000, were
"completely uninterpretable," Professor Peter Smith, chairman of the Spongiform
Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC) said. Data appea
ring to show signs of BSE infection in sheep were due to be presented to SEAC
yesterday but had to be withdrawn.
The experiment was crucial because it was supposed to reveal whether or not sheep as
well as cattle acquired BSE in the late 1980s. Prof Smith said: "It appears to have
been a dreadful mistake. I think it’s too early yet
to conclude that the study was a complete waste of time, but it does look like that
might be the case."
The scientists at the Institute of Animal Health were conducting more than one study,
and had collected brain material from both sheep and cattle.
Prof Smith said: "Once it’s a paste a cow brain looks very like a sheep brain. That’s
no excuse, however - the samples should have been properly labelled - but you can’t
tell them apart just from their appearance.
"It’s hard to come to any other conclusion than that a serious error was made."
The experiment involved testing for BSE in what was thought to be 2,860 brains from
sheep which had died of scrapie between 1990 and 1992.
It involved injecting brain material into laboratory mice and seeing if they developed
an illness which bore the hallmarks of BSE.
Scrapie is a sheep disease related to BSE but, unlike the cattle
illness it cannot be transmitted to humans.
Hamish Macdonell Scottish Political Editor
Saturday, 20th October 2001
The Scotsman
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