Despite the fact that a dreadful disease has been around from the start of tory rule in 1979 many scientific questions about bse are still unanswered - primarily because the government has suppressed scientific investigation into the disease.

Richard lacey may well be right, "There is every reason to believe that BSE is now endemic throughout the country."; "Although 300 cases are detected with the obvious symptoms every week, there are literally millions of Animals carrying the infection, with little possibility of showing the disease if they’ve got it."

If richard lacey is correct then most of the Cattle being slaughtered in abattoirs are infected by bse. However, the government’s private estimate, based on no scientific investigation whatsoever, is at the other end of the spectrum - approximately 250 a week. Itv’s ‘world in action’ carried out an investigation showing that the official number of bse-infected Cows was an underestimate, "We (‘world in action’) asked the Chief Vet, Keith Meldrum, about the number of animals with BSE that we’re eating. He was reticent with the figures. "That’s a peculiar question to ask. I start the other way around and say first of all that all cattle that we believe may have the disease are removed from the human food chain and destroyed." ‘World in Action’ found the real answer buried in technical papers. These revealed that the government’s own experts believe that the official number of cows with BSE, around 250 a week, is an underestimate and needs to be multiplied by 3 to reach the correct figure." ‘World in action’ concluded that most bse-infected Cows are ending up in abattoirs rather than incinerators, "They told you that mad cows were destroyed. ‘World in Action’ discovered that most cows infected with bse end up being eaten." This rather gory conclusion seems somewhat trite if only 600-750 of the Cows going into abattoirs are infected by bse.

It should be obvious from previous sections that it is not possible to stop bse-infected material getting into the foodchain.

Even if all the infected organs are carefully removed from the carcass the use of various types of machinery inevitably spreads infected material over the meat which goes into the food chain. Slaughterhouses have been allowed to split open Cattle skulls and the spinal column both of which splatter bse-infected material onto the carcass. Many abattoirs use high-powered hoses to wash down carcasses helping to spread disease.

An Animal’s spinal column is connected to thousands of nerve fibres leading to flesh and muscles throughout the body. It is absurd to believe that a prion would stay solely in the spinal column and not move along these nerve pathways, "The infective agent appears to congregate in nervous tissue, but it is extremely likely that smaller amounts will exist in the nervous tissue intertwined in the muscle tissue we call meat."

The government has suggested bse is present only in specified Cattle organs. It has been pointed out above, however, that one of the leading scientists in the field has suggested that bse is present throughout the body, "By 1988, working for the Public Health Laboratory Service in Newcastle, Narang had established that the infectious agent was a virus with a single strand of DNA. If there was DNA, the virus must be present throughout the body." It is present in blood, urine and faeces, skin and bones. Richard lacey also believes the disease can be passed on through breath and saliva - it has been discovered that, "Caged mink transmit the disease when they bite each other."

Virtually everyone who has eaten beef will be infected.

Blood transfusions are also a risk.

If bse is present in blood then the disease will inevitably be passed on to Calves. Despite the slaughter of bse-infected Cows their offspring have not been slaughtered and some slaughter plans avoid the culling of Calves.

If Cows pass bse on to their Calves then the only way to eradicate the disease will be to cull all herds in brutland.

Narash has suggested that bse infected feed was given to Chickens and that the disease got into Chicken manure. When Chicken manure was used as a feed for other livestock Animals they also became contaminated.

If bse is found urine and faeces then it will infect pastureland. It will also reinfect any bse-free Cattle browsing on the Soil. If this is the case then most of the country’s pharmland will have to be abandoned. This would also mean that even organic farming is at risk if it imported infected manure or, in the future, tries to take over from conventional livestock pharming.

If bse is found urine and faeces then it could percolate through the Soil and get into the water supply.

"It can remain in the earth for many years."

If the disease can be passed on through breathing or coughing then the country would have to be put into quarantine.

If the disease can be passed on through breath and saliva then romance won’t be so romantic.

If bse is present throughout a Cow then milk will be infected and dairy products would have to be banned.

If it gets into the bones and skin it will infect the huge number of products containing gelatine, "Even vegetarians may have eaten the infectious agent expected to be in the bones of cows that are made into gelatine found in numerous products such as sweets, soups, stocks and other processed foods."

If bse gets into all parts of the body there is little choice but to abandon the Cattle industry.

There are a number of factors which suggest bse can be transmitted through birth. Firstly, scrapie is passed on through birth in both Sheep and Goats. Secondly, some of the species which have recently been infected with bse also transmit the disease through birth, "Fear that calves are getting mad cow disease from their mothers was heightened yesterday when the first infant antelope born to an infected mother was confirmed to have died from the brain disorder at London zoo." This was far from being an isolated case, "Five of London Zoo's greater kudus - a type of African antelope - have now been diagnozed as having BSE. The first kudus died in 1989 and was thought to have contracted the disease through feed .. Her daughter was later found to be infected, probably during birth. The latest three cases were all males and none had been fed on ruminant protein."

As far as Cattle are concerned, "The first case of 'mad calf' disease, involving a young dairy cow thought to have caught the fatal BSE brain disorder from its mother was disclosed by the Minister of Agriculture. There have been 26 previous cases where calves born to BSE mothers have also died from the disorder. But they were all born before July 1988 when the government banned from cattle feed the scrapie infected sheep offals." It was pointed out years ago that, "Some 20,000 calves have been born to cows which were later confirmed as having BSE."

It has been suggested that if bse is transmissible then the number of reported cases of bse-induced Cattle fatalities would not show the marked decline that has occurred since fatalities reached a peak in 1992. The main reason that Cattle fatalities seem to be declining is because an increasing number of pharmers are refusing to notify the government about diseased Animals. The financial loss is too significant and many pharmers have learnt how to evade government restrictions on selling bse-infected Cattle - as indicated in the section ‘Cattle Industry Lies’. In the past there was a huge disparity between the number of Cattle eating scrapie-infested feedstuff and the number of reported bse cases. Today there is a disparity between the number of Cattle with bse and the number of reported bse cases.

Given that all livestock species have been fed with bse-infected material then they too will be harbouring the disease. Although there have been no natural cases of bse amongst Pigs, Sheep and Poultry they could be harbouring the infective agent until it is passed to a host with a long enough life-span to incubate the disease.

It is not known whether the bse infective agent can be harboured by one species and then incubated by another.

A leading surgeon has proposed that one way of avoiding current shortages in transplant organs is to use Pig's organs which, physiologically, are similar to humans’. Genetically modified Pigs are being reared as potential organ donors. It is possible that they might have the disease even though they are never allowed to grow old enough to suffer the disease. If Pigs have been fed on Bse infected feedstuff the disease could be passed on when Pig organs are transplanted to oomans.

There is very little scientific evidence about human susceptibility to bse. It is not known how much bse is needed to infect humans; it is not known whether bse accumulates in the body until it reaches a point where the disease can take hold or whether it is removed from the body over time; and, it is not known how long the disease takes to incubate in humans.

Once again, this is not known. However, investigations could be carried out to try and discover the answer e.g. by carrying out post mortems on the deceased.

It is not known when the disease first started to infect humans, "Helen grant believes that people were exposed to bse from 1981."

It will be possible to give a rough answer to this question by the end of 1996 when the trend of human fatalities should become obvious.

"Sheila Gore of the Medical Research Council’s biostatistics unit yesterday warned that young women who contracted the new strain of CJD could pass it on to their children without knowing they had the disease. She said, "For the first time we are seeing cases of CJD among young women still in their child bearing years. Because this has never happened before we have no idea of the risk of maternal infection."

After the announcement of the bse-cjd deaths, and the brutish government’s obvious failure to convince the public that they should continue to eat diseased meat simply to maintain pharmers’ profits, the national pharmers union decided that the best course of action to restore public confidence in the beef industry would be to carry out a cull of all Cattle over 30 months old. The reason for this proposal is that bse exists primarily in older Cows, "Only one or two cases of bse have been detected in cows aged under 30 months." So, by getting rid of old Cows it would be possible to get rid of bse.

There is no scientific evidence for the view that only Cows over 30 months old get the disease and that it would be possible to eradicate bse through eradicating Cows over this limit. What this view totally ignores is the fact that Cows carry the disease long before the disease shows its first outward manifestations. A cull of older Cows would be a waste of time. The policy was put forward solely as a means of providing Pharmers with yet more compensation for Animals they can no longer sell on the market. Such a policy raises the spectre of a land free of mad Cows but inundated by loony bipeds. Brutland would never see a mad Cow again but the disease would continue to swirl through the herds killing more and more people. Perhaps the thinking behind this policy was that if Cattle were no longer seen to be dancing to their deaths then the public would lose interest in the issue.

Whilst the national pharmers union advocates a cull of all Cattle over 30 months, it is totally opposed to a selective culling of those herds which have had cases of bse. (However, the meat and livestock commission supports the targeted approach). If a cull of all Cattle over 30 months seems bonkers, the nfu’s opposition to a cull of herds with cases of bse seems no less bonkers. It seems absurd to execute Cattle over 30 months old when they come from bse free herds (and even organically reared herds) whilst ignoring all the Cattle under 30 months old in bse-infected herds.

At the luxembourg meeting of the european community’s agriculture ministers it was agreed there should be a general cull of all Cattle over 30 months old and a selective cull whose criteria needed to be determined. European governments did not favour the former policy but accepted it because it was the only one the brutish government seemed willing to countenance since it had been proposed by the national pharmers union. European governments supported a selective cull since some of them had already carried out such a policy where there had been an outbreak of bse in their own countries. In conclusion, the status of the luxembourg decision is not clear since brutland did not sign the agreement.

After the luxembourg meeting the brutish government began to show increasing signs of backtracking on the ‘agreement’ trying to revert back to dorrell’s do-nothing policy. Many brutish pharmers, especially those with no bse cases, have objected to a general cull, even though the policy had been proposed by their own union, and a number of backbench tory politicians began to insist that the government should ignore the luxembourg decision altogether. Brutish vets are opposed to any form of slaughter, "My immediate reaction to it (the luxembourg decision to cull Cows) is that there is no scientific reason for it. It is purely for the grounds of public confidence in meat."

A general cull would have meant the slaughter of 4.6 million Cows. A selective cull could mean anywhere from thousands to another million Cows, "The latest figures for the incidence of bse show that at one extreme 11,749 pharms have had one case whilst at the other extreme 593 have had more than 10 cases. If a slaughter target was set at five cases of bse or more that would mean the destruction of more than 10,000 herds. While a target of 10 cases would reprieve more than 6,000 of these herds." In other words, only 4,000 herds would be destroyed.

Richard lacey has campaigned for years to highlight the threat posed by bse. His policy to eradicate the disease is a selective cull "all cattle from infected herds - an estimated 6 million animals - need to be slaughtered if there is to be any hope of eradicating the infection."

A general cull of cattle over 30 months old would not have any effect on curbing bse if the disease is transmissible. A selective cull of all herds which have had bse seems much more sensible but it would not be effective. Firstly, huge numbers of Cattle have eaten scrapie-bse infected feed and these Animals may be harbouring the disease. Secondly, many pharmers claiming to have bse-free herds are probably lying.

The main objection to selective culling is that it is unjust since some Cattle in a herd may have the disease and others might not - this is even more unjust where there is a test which could be used to determine whether Animals have the disease or not.

Even if Cattle are diagnozed as having the diseased this is no justifcation for slaughtering them. The Animals should be allowed to lead out the rest of their lives until such time as they show signs of suffering from the disease. Such a policy would pose a health risk if the disease got into the soil and was then picked up Wildlife but this is a risk which could be taken until such time as the evidence showed that the risk was greater than envisaged.

The first objective of opposing the slaughter of Cattle should be Animals’ welfare. The second objective is the need to abolish the beef industry. The third objective is the destruction of the Animal exploitation industry.

There is no justification for a general or a selective culling. As has been noted it is probably the case that bse is now endemic throughout all beef herds, "Although 300 cases are detected with the obvious symptoms every week, there are literally millions of Animals carrying the infection, with little possibility of showing the disease if they’ve got it." The only solution to prevent further loss of life is to dismantle the entire beef industry.

However, it is not enough to dismantle the beef industry. It is necessary to dismantle the entire Animal exploitation industry. Bse is likely to have infected not only Cattle but all livestock Animals, "Pigs and poultry could be harbouring BSE and passing it on to humans, says Paul Brown of the United States National Institutes of Health. Until two weeks ago, feed contaminated with scrapie continued to be fed legally to pigs and poultry. "How ironic if 11 million British cattle should be slaughtered in a pre-emptive strike to eliminate CJD, only to find belatedly that the real villains were pigs or chickens."" In order to protect human lives the Animal exploitation industry should be abandoned. Given that bse could have infected the Soil on which livestock Animals have pastured, then the land should be fenced off and allowed to revert back to Forest.

Even if it turns out that bse is not a major threat to human health there are a number of other diseases circulating as a result of Animal exploitation which makes it imperative to protect lives by dismantling the Animal exploitation industry, "BIV (bovine immuno-deficiency - like a virus) is far more widespread than was first thought. The US Department of agriculture has admitted that 10% of all cattle are infected with BIV-cow AIDS."; "Humans could have been contaminated with BIV. One way this might have happened is as follows: the manufacture of human vaccines requires the growth of virus in cell cultures using foetal calf serum. Although this serum is screened for ‘contaminants’, it is entirely possible that BIV may have contaminated smallpox vaccines administered throughout Africa and parts of the Caribbean between 1967 and 1980, thus giving rise to AIDS?"

The real reason for abandoning the Animal exploitation industry has nothing to do with bse-cjd or saving human lives. The Animal exploitation industry is going to have to be abandoned anyway in order to prevent global warming and the destabilization of the climate. The Animal exploitation industry is the biggest cause of ecological destruction the biggest cause of climatic stabilization. The land that it has usurped is desperately needed to Reforest the Earth in thus stabilize the climate. The threat posed by bse is serious but the threat posed by global warming is far more profound. Far more people’s lives will be lost through a global warming disaster than through bse.

Bse’s threat to human lives could be a blessing in disguise if it encourages the abandonment of the Animal expoitation industry because this will make it possible not merely to stop the slaughter of Animals but to combat global warming and protect the Earth’s life support system. If, however, the industry is not abandoned and the bruts show not the slightest interest in combatting global warming then bse could be a blessing in disguise.

The brutish chief medical officer, donald acheson, who throughout the late 1980s pronounced, without the slightest reliance on scientific evidence, that beef was safe, was the same person who, in the early 1980s pronounced, once again without the slightest aid of scientific investigation, that blood supplies were safe. He refused to monitor, let alone ban, the import of blood supplies from America despite numerous warnings from various experts that it might be infected with the aids virus and thus pose a serious risk to human health.

The first haemophiliac to become a victim of an aids-infected blood transfusion in brutland was diagnosed in 1983. Many haemophiliacs, as well as others who had blood transfusions, caught the disease. Some of these have died whilst the remainder are in the process of dying, "There are 5,000 haemophiliacs in Britain; 1200 contaminated with HIV. At the end of July 1990, 207 of these had developed full blown AIDS and 137 had died." This is brutland's worst medical disaster. After a great deal of pressure and considerable wrangling, the government paid all 1200 hiv victims £20,000 each for ruining their lives.

A number of haemophiliacs believed such a payment was derisory and took the government to court for increased compensation. In the court case the government denied any liability. Its main line of defence was that it had no statutory duty to protect individuals only public health, "The Department of Health did not owe a legal duty of care to individuals but only to the public at large." - which in the light of later events was a gross overstatement of the sort of responsibilities that thatcherites were willing to bear. The judge in the case was aghast at the government's callousness and went so far out of his way to dismiss the prosecution case that the department of health considered having him removed from the case, "Mr Justice Ognall told the government that it should settle the claims. Health authorities considered moves to have the judge taken off the case but these have been dropped. The judge said, 'I believe that the legal profession has a duty to do its best to see that the legal system does not become a scapegoat, in the eyes of the public, for what may be the unjust and inhumane denial of any significant measure of compensation to the plaintiffs." Whilst the court case was still being heard the government announced firstly, that it would fork out £340 million to compensate hundreds of investors who lost their investments after a recent collapse of a private company. Ted heath mp was one of those reimbursed - doubtlessly alongside a number of other tory mps. And, secondly, john selwyn gummer, "promised beef farmers an extra £8 million in aid for the problems caused by BSE." The tory government obviously believes in state handouts for tories whilst everyone else has to endure the free market.

From the 1950s to the 1970s doctors decided to combat dwarfism by using human growth hormones. This drug was obtained from the pituitary glands taken from corpses. This would have worked perfectly safely if it wasn’t for the fact that some of the glands were taken from people who had died from the brain degenerative disease, cjd. As a consequence, "In the UK, during the period 1959 to 1985, several thousand children were injected with human growth hormone, a treatment for dwarfism. At that time, human growth hormone was extracted from pituitary glands removed from the brains of corpses. .. an unknown number of children became infected with CJD. To date, seven patients .. have died from CJD."

Whether this was the fault of mortuary technicians for not doing their job properly or the medical authorities for not ensuring the glands were removed only from people with healthy brains, is immaterial. However, what happened once people had contracted the disease is not immaterial but typical of the cynical, ruthless, contemptible nature of tory government, "The Department of Health decided not to tell patients that their lives might have been put at risk." They government kept quiet about this disease for seven years even though some of these people might have given blood transfusions and thus helped to spread the disease even further.

Doctors also used human growth hormones to help women to conceive and they too contracted cjd.

The tories commitment to their own self interests, their willingness to engage in wholesale lies, misrepresentations and deceits over any issue, has come home to roost with bse. In the future they could be known as the government which originated bse; they will certainly be known as the government which incubated the disease; and they ought to be seen as the government which did next to nothing to stop the spread of the disease in case it damaged the beef industry. The government totally failed to ensure the purity of blood products imported from america and, as a consequence, over a thousand haemophiliacs contracted aids resulting in many deaths. If aids-haemophiliacs is the tories first epidemic; bse is the second and bse-cjd is the third. David clarke, a former member of the labour party’s shadow cabinet, is clear about where the blame should lie, "My contention is that this government is directly responsible for this disease appearing in Britain."

Jeremy is a green - a green, car loving, fanatical fox hunter. He also likes his sausages so let’s keep an eye out for him.

One of the few comics whose so-called charity work has helped to kill people by boosting an epidemic.

"Our esteemed Chief Medical Officer, Dr Kenneth Calman, noted last week a striking increase in hospital admissions and GP consultations for asthma. It now affects two million people he says .. He looks at possible causes .. and lists "genetic predisposition to the illness which can be triggered by various factors including diet, maternal cigarette smoking and indoor and outdoor pollution. The two words that have been studiously avoided are "emissions" and "transport". Dr Calman has a government issue Rover 216."

The problem with gummer is not merely that for years he ignored the scientific advice of the chair of the government’s committee set up to look into bse, nor that he stridently and aggressively took the anti-scientific stance that eating meat was safe, but that he believed there was nothing ethically wrong with turning herbivores into carnivores nor with cannibalizing livestock Animals by feeding them on their own remains so that Cattle ate Cattle, Sheep ate Sheep, and Chickens ate Chickens. On the contrary, turning herbivores into carnivores was natural; cannabalizing Animals was natural. To this stupid, odious, arrogant, little crackpot it was vegetarians who were "wholly unnatural".

Gummer’s understanding of environmental issues is no less perverse, "Mr Gummer told the briefing in Bonn that the disposal of Brent Spar .. would not harm the environment. He said there had been 121 North sea rigs for disposal, but only one so far was being disposed of in the Atlantic. The rest were for land disposal. The other 280 or so rigs would be dealt with on a case by case basis. The Shell rig would not be the only one to be sunk at sea." Perhaps gummer’s views would be a bit less unpalatable if it wasn’t for the fact that, "The Minister of agriculture, John Gummer, is to be reprimanded by MPs over his failure to disclose more than £2,000 of work done at his Suffolk home by Britain's biggest meat company, Hillsdown Holdings."

David maclean, the so-called food minister, elaborated on gummer’s unearthly stance. Whilst proclaiming beef was safe to eat he took it upon himself to warn the public that eating natural foods could be dangerous.

The tory government’s silencing, sidelining and sacking of scientists concerned with the bse-cjd crisis is by no means an isolated phenomena. The failure of the country’s top scientists to denounce the government’s pseudo-scientific nonsense is not an accident. Since 1979, tory governments have been promoting policies which have increased scientists’ dependency on the interests of multi-national corporations. The situation has deteriorated to such an extent that one world renown scientist felt confident to make the statement that he was the only independent scientist left in the country.

Tory governments have promoted an extreme free market ideology aimed at allowing businesses to run their affairs without state interference. It has permitted self regulation for the business world, the financial world, and any other tory institutions whilst imposing hyper-regulations on everyone else. This has led to new policies in three areas. Firstly, the tories privatized government research institutes because it was believed that such research would be better carried out by industry. Secondly, the tories also privatized a large number of government regulatory departments in an attempt to get industry to take over responsibility for regulating itself - even though this creates a conflict of interest between producers and consumers. Thirdly, the tories have tried to make science more practicable and thus more relevant to the modern world. The government has forced university research departments to obtain more of their funding from industry. What this has meant in reality is forcing scientists to look for profits rather than the truth. The political advantage of these three changes has been to make most of the country’s scientists financially dependent on multi-national corporations.

In the past a large number of the country’s scientists have been either university based researchers, or public servants. To one degree or another, they were independent and objective and could be relied upon to provide impartial advice. As a consequence of all the changes introduced by the tories the country’s scientific elite is now on the payroll of multi-national corporations. Their grants, wages, careers, perks and pensions are now dependent upon doing what is in the interests of multi-national corporations. Scientists are no longer free to make objective statements about issues which might have a negative impact on the profits of the multi-national corporations which employ them. Scientific facts today are those which conform to the interests of multi-national corporations whilst anything which conflicts with the interests of multi-national corporations automatically becomes non-scientific. If multi-national corporations own all the scientists then science is whatever they do whilst anything done outside multi-national corporations is non-scientific by definition.

The government’s destruction of scientific independence, impartiality and objectivity, has been brought about in four main ways:-

* privatizing government research and regulatory departments;

* forcing universities to look for funding from private industry;

* appointing junk scientists to advisory committees; and, finally,

* making political appointments to supervisory committees.

The government has privatized more and more regulatory functions which have been taken over by multi-national companies.

The result of the government's insistence on universities 'paying their way' is that campuses have been invaded by private industries (science parks being the tip of the iceburg). University researchers are increasingly dependent upon private industry for grants, gratuities, contracts, careers, status, awards, recognition, honours and pensions, etc.. Today the main aim of academic research is not truth but profit and the protection of the interests of multi-national corporations.

Virtually all of the government’s scientific advisory comittees are composed of scientists who are financially dependent upon multi-national corporations.

For most of its existence the national radiological protection board (nrpb) ignored all requests to monitor the effects of radiation on the environment, "The National Radiological Protection Board refuses to measure plutonium around Windscale." It also refused to carry out health tests on workers in the industry and those living in surrounding areas. It was only after a television documentary publicized a scientific study which revealed the existence of leukaemia clusters around windscale that the public began to doubt nrpb's smug reassurances that the public’s health was not at risk. But, even then, it did nothing except call into question the scientific basis of the study.

The procedures for assessing the environmental and health hazards posed by new chemicals are riddled with corruption.

The tories free market ideology has sabotaged most attempts to control pollution. The government has passed weak laws on the environment and then denied pollution inspectorates the financial resources to monitor pollution and ensure that both industry and pharmers complied with the regulations. The run down of the pollution regulatory agencies has been so bad that one major chemical company publically demanded the government employ more inspectors to ensure that one of its products was used safely by pharmers because the company was worried about its misuse. It has closed down pollution inspection centres, "The country’s leading environmental laboratory at Warren Springs, near Stevenage, Hertfordshire, is to close next March. Warren Springs has provided data on factory emissions, acid rain, recycling, land contamination and industrial waste."

The government's disdain for environmental regulations reached such shocking levels of irresponsibility that it demoralized many of the pollution inspectorate's top officials. Some of them resigned. The chief executive, brian ponsford, committed suicide. The government's anarchistic, laisser faire, attitude toward the environment was revealed in a number of instances. In 1975 european community countries agreed to a set of minimum pollution standards for water over a ten year period. In the summer of 1989, nicholas ridley, secretary of state for the environment, claimed that the standards were "ridicluous, extravagant and unnecessary". He never attended a meeting of european environment ministers while he was secretary of state for the Environment; and Lord Young called for the abolition of pollution controls. Industries weren’t slow in picking up the message that they could do what they wanted because it wouldn’t be long before all regulations were abolished. As a consequence, "More than half of all companies needing pollution licenses are ignoring their legal obligation to apply for them."This whole approach to pollution control is nothing less than a shambles which borders on the criminally irresponsible.

The procedures for assessing the environmental and health hazards posed by new medicines are as riddled with corruption as the parallel process of assessing new chemicals, "The real problem (of the 1968 Medicines Act) is that there are no clauses that require any product to be beneficial, or indeed to be needed at all. Surely a requirement of need should be the first and most important clause in any Medicines Act." It has been reported that the committee on the safety of medicine, which vets the safety of new drugs, is dominated by doctors whose livelihoods are dependent upon the chemical industry, "Most of the doctors and medical scientists chosen by ministers to monitor the pharmaceutical industry receive regular payments from drug companies, according to the 1988 annual report of the Medicines Commission. .. only 6 out of 24 members of the Medicines Commission have no financial interests with drug companies. A similar list of payments and grants is disclosed by members of the Committee on the Safety of Medicines. Only 4 of its 20 members declare no financial interests of any kind."; "The latest figures show that 16 out of the 20 members disclose financial interests of some kind. Altogether, members of the committee disclosed personal payments from 43 drug companies and 128 research grants paid by the pharmaceutical industry."

"In the UK, the Advisory Committee on Pesticides, which is supposed to advise the government on the control of the use of pesticides, is largely made up of representatives of the agro-chemical industry and various academics whose research grants they pay or otherwise control."

It is quite incredible that brutland could have had scrapie for 200 hundred years whilst other countries have managed to eradicate the disease. Even worse is that the vets do not even know about the scale of scrapie amongst sheep, "Surprisingly, the actual prevalence of scrapie is not known in this country - itself a sad indictment of the investment into vetinary research and surveillance."

"Fees paid by food and drug companies to the government's food advisers were revealed for the first time yesterday. The list of interests shows that 3 out of nine members of the committee on Medical Aspects of Food policy are supported by food and drug companies. 31 out of the 59 members of all the committee's panels declare at least one personal or non-personal financial link with a drug or food company."

"Five members of the government's scientific panel examining the alleged dangers of sheep dips are receiving money from campanies which make the chemicals."

"When Stephen Vine, Chief Home Office Inspector (of vivisection laboratories) .. retired from the Inspectorate .. he promptly became an active member of .. the vivisection lobby - the Research Defence Society."There are a number of fruitcake scientists on government appointed committees who hide behind junk science, "Octopuses are to be protected from painful scientific experiments .. The Home Office has acted on recommendations from its Animal Procedures committee ... A minority of the committee voted against extending protection to any of the encphalopods .. on the grounds that "there is no definite, scientific evidence" that animals experience pain or suffering." Now, where has this sort of nonsense been heard of before?

"Financial links between food companies and the government's most senior experts on food policy were revealed for the first time yesterday. 12 out of 17 members of the Food Advisory Committee declared some cash reward from food companies." "The failure of the government to put adequate controls over commercial cook-chill operations is a clear example of its concern for food producers rather than consumers."

"Leading dentists today attacked the Medical Research Council for accepting money from the sugar industry to sponsor a symposium on tooth decay. They accuse the government funded council of lending "spurious scientific respectability" to the Sugar Bureau (the lobby group of the sugar industry giants such as Tate and Lyle) by allowing it to sponsor the meeting on Monday. A bureau spokeswoman, Miriam Cummins, confirmed that the group would be paying all the travel, hotel and meal expenses of the speakers at the meeting. Lord Jellicoe, a former chairman of Tate and Lyle, was chairman of the MRC from 1982-1990. The Coma panel advised last July that sugar consumption should fall by at least a third from the 90 lbs a year Britain's consume."

"Virginia Bottomley has allocated more than £20 million for salaries for chairmen and members of the board of 289 NHS trusts .. many of the top jobs, carrying salaries of more than £19,000 a year, are going to former government ministers, their spouses and conservative candidates who failed to win seats in the general election."; "In 12 of the 14 regional and district health bodies there were 697 non-executive places of which 402 went to business and commercial interests."

At the same time as the tory government has been packing party hacks onto the boards of nhs trusts, it has also been placing restrictions on health workers not to talk to the press about what is going on in hospitals during the restructuring of the health service, "Health workers should have no need to talk to the press." the Department of Health said yesterday." This regulation has nothing to do with improving health services but is purely to try and save the tories political embarrassment.

"Any action towards a healthier lifestyle would inevitably conflict with powerful vested interest groups such as

the tobacco and alcohol industries,

the meat and diary industry,

the processed food industry, and

the drug industry,

whose aggressive advertising and promotional activities encourage the mistaken belief that health can be obtained from a bottle."

The government’s corruption of the country’s scientific elite is just another example of the government’s corruption of all state sponsored organizations. The labour party’s submission to the nolan committee investigating goverment sleaze will "demand rigorous scrutiny to halt John Major’s "quango gravy train". It will also demand a detailed register of the 40,000 Tory-appointed members of quangos - unaccountable public bodies."

There are those who believe in progress and that life today is far more environmentally healthy than it has ever been in the past. This is, of course, codswallop. There is far more use of fossil fuels than ever before; there are more toxic chemicals being produced today than ever before; there is far more pollution being dumped into the environment than ever before; there is more waste being dumped into the environment than ever before; and, there is more manure being dumped into the environment than ever before. The reason that brutland often stands alone in europe is that europe has much higher public standards of cleanliness and hygiene.

It is impossible for anyone to set foot outside of their front door today without being engulfed by clouds of poisonous car fumes. Whilst dirty smelly car fumes may be an everyday visible and pungent reality in urban areas, rural folk are being increasingly affected by the invisible and odourless pollution from car fumes whether this might be acid rain or tropospheric ozone pollution.

Virtually every single beach in the country is awash with a vast range of chemical poisons and biological diseases.

Scrapie has existed in this country for two centuries. It is a disease which government and pharmers have believed we could live with. Whilst other countries have rid their livestock of this disease brutland has not, "Scrapie has been eliminated completely from German and New Zealand sheep."

There are few countries which can boast the creation of one new dreadful disease but to create two within a matter of a decade shows the true malignancy of tory governments. Bse and bse-cjd is a truly brutish disease.

Despite the sacking of edwina curry, most egg production is still riddled with salmonella.

For generations this country has seen nothing wrong with having some of the most vile and disgusting slaughterhouses in the world - slaughterhouses which are about as hygienic as most public lavatories, "The Guardian first disclosed in March 1989 that only one British abbatoir in 10 held an EC hygiene export certificate."