Dairy of the Bse Epidemic May-September 2000

The Increasing Disregard for a Highly Dangerous Disease.

April 29th 2000: The Lull of Wishful Thinking.

Dealler refers to a daily mail article, ‘No evidence yet of any CJD epidemic’ which discusses the results from the recent tests on ooman tonsils which failed to find any traces of bse-cj.[2] He warns, “We must remember that the methods used to test sections are extremely poor in that prion protein will build up slowly initially and hence it is not clear how long before clinical CJD appears that the prion is seen in the periferal tissues. However, if large numbers had been found with it in the study then it would have been frightening - and they were not - Ed.”[3] The test for bse involved injecting samples of tonsils into the brains of Mice to see if they would succumb to bse. They didn’t not because there was no bse present but because they are not sensitive to detect the disease. This is yet another example of the uselessness of Animal experiments.

May 4th 2000: Yet another Professor Dismisses Bse-Cjd Epidemic.

Dealler quotes professor thomas at city university, london. The bse .. “epidemic is now in decline and will all be over by 2006." (Dealler goes on to report that) Professor Thomas said that (Liam Donnaldson's prediction of bse-cjd being from 100s to millions) "was becoming strongly misleading". For a long time the information has been pointing in the same direction: "a total number of 100 cases, though it could be as low as 75 or as high as 150". (Dealler is very sceptical of this statement). “I would like to see his stats for this as it sound extremely odd.””[4]

May 7th 2000: Rspca Leader Suffering from Terminal Obesiance to the Pharming Industry?

“An RSPCA leader was seriously ill in hospital last night with a condition linked to mad cow disease.”[5] This is likely to be an alf hoax given that the rspca was mad enough to have offered a job to one of the director’s who ran shamrock farm. Still it would be marvellous if it was true.

May 10th 2000: Oxford Professor quits Oxford University.

Dealler points out there have been some strange goings-on at oxford university regarding the pharmers’ friend roy anderson, “Professor Anderson, a member of seac, that has been investigated in Oxford concerning financial affairs. Also he had been investigated after claims that he had said that Dunetra Gupta had gained her post at Oxford by having a sexual affair with the head of the zoology department. At this point no evidence of financial impropriety has been found.”[6]

June 2nd 2000: Annual Bse-cjd Fatalities.

Cjd surveillance unit’s figures for Bse-cjd Fatalities.

There is no evidence of a bse-cjd epidemic in the figures for annual fatalities. The cjd surveillance unit gives the following statistics.

1995 - 3 deaths

1996 - 10 deaths - running total 13

1997 - 10 deaths - running total 23

1998 - 17 deaths - running total 40

1999 - 13 deaths - running total 53. And, so far in

2000 - 5 deaths with 10 probable victims still alive, 2 dead awaiting post mortem - running total 70.[7]

June 6-8th 2000: The Propagandists Dismissing Bse-Cjd are responsible for Spreading Bse.

Dealler reports that the criminal pharming underworld is involved in providing offals for ooman consumption. The absence of any discussion of bse issue in the brutish media continues to encourage the public to believe the disease has disappeared, so people are reverting to their previous eating activities, “Local Newspapers in South London 6-8.6.00 Butchers shop found to have been selling offal. It is not at all clear that this represents a risk but it seems that the DofH and the local council are denying any risk whatsoever. The reason for this may well be because of the information put out from MAFF suggesting that cattle born after 1996 are not infected with BSE.[8] Personally, this issue does not provoke any concern. As a veganite i would much prefer that Cattle who have been slaughtered at an abattoir should have brains eaten by oomans rather than being burnt in an incinerator. Since only the most die-hard carnivore is likely to pander after such material it would be poetic justice.

June 8th 2000: Anderson Relocates to Imperial College.

It was pointed out last month that there had been some strange goings-on in the zoology department where anderson works. According to dealler, anderson has now left oxford university to take up a position with imperial college london. The news seems to be extremely promising, “Information concerning the returning of Professor Anderson to Imperial College. It is not clear that he will do any further work on BSE.”[9] Interestingly, john collinge is also based at imperial. Soon after anderson was appointed to the seac by the rabidly right wing ‘no such thing as bse’ labour government he was telling collinge how to do his job. On sept 11th 1998, “The government’s advisory committee of cjd has recommended a new series of tests on cows that appear healthy but may be carrying the agents that cause ‘mad cow’ disease. The tests are the suggestion of john collinge, of st mary’s hospital, paddington, west london, who has developed a technique that can be used to test samples from cows quickly and cheaply. Dr collinge’s test, using a technique called western blot, detects the aberrant prion proteins ..” Unfortunately, collinge was never given the opportunity to refine this test nor conduct his health checks on Cows because anderson was reported to have had his doubts about the scientific accuracy of his work even though he’s not qualified in that area, “Dr collinge’s test needed further validation before it could be relied on.”[10]

June 10th 2000: The Spread of the Great Brutish Diseases around the World. European Governments adopting Brutish Denialist Epidemic

New scientist carries an article on the spread of the brutish disease around the world and how governments are, rather bizarrely, emulating the brutish government’s tactics for spreading the disease. The european commission’s two year study has named and shamed the countries with the disease but their government’s continue to deny the existence of the disease, “Bse, believed to be the cause of vcjd, is much more widespread than some countries will admit: the advisers say that germany, italy and spain, officially bse-free, are “likely to be infected”. And infection “is unlikely but cannot be excluded” in six more european countries, as well as canada, australia and the us. These figures have emerged from a two year study for the commission of the factors affecting the spread of bse in 25 countries by independent scientists and experts in the countries concerned. Germany imported 13,000 british cattle at the height of britain’s epidemic, plus 1200 tonnes of british mbm. The figures for spain and italy were similar. All three countries have refused commission requests to remove high risk tissue, such as brains and spinal cords, from Cattle carcasses, insisting their Cattle are bse-free. The us imported 126 Cattle and 44 tonnes of mbm from britain.”[11] However, dealler comments that the franch government is taking some measures to discover the actual prevalence of bse .. “a good example is the testing of 40,000 cattle in France, which is going on currently. If they are only expecting to find a similar number to the 89 cases of 10 million cattle in the country then that represents around one animal in 100,000 symptomatic and around one in 30,000 including asymptomatic adults. Therefore they should find just one cow in their 40,000 if they are lucky. The gossip is now saying that they have found much more than this and can now calculate the level of under reporting that is taking place).”[12]

New scientist’ also carries an editorial about the spread of this english disease, “Among bse scientists, it has been an open secret for years that germany, italy and spain are in a state of denial about bse. It’s time these nations ditched their passive surveillance techniques and began to search actively for bse and, if needed, take precautions to protect people from the nasty disease it appears to cause. The paris based world organization for Animal health (oie) should demand stricter proff for the rest of the world.”[13]

It makes one feel so proud that brutland is spreading its influence around the world in such a profound way. What a contribution this country is going to make to ooman civilization in the 21stc. This country, so full of revolting, mad, rampaging livestock, is going to be renowned the world over for these highly contagious diseases. Of all the countries in the world where these diseases could have struck it was odds on that it would be this country. The “english disease” used to refer to lazy, strike-happy, workers. Then it referred to the uncivilized behaviour of hundreds of thousand of brutish yobs who used to travel abroad to football matches and seaside resorts. But now we know the english disease is truly the political product of the corrupt carcass of the brutish landowning aristocracy whose veto over the political system locks the country into a barbaric medieval primitivism where bloodsports are protected against the wishes of the vast majority of people in this country. Football hooligans, bse, bse-cjd, ‘care in the community’, the aristocratic veto over democracy, public schoolboy fagging, paedophilia, bloodsports - these are just facets of the english disease.

June 10th 2000: First baby may be Dying of Bse.

The mirror reports, “The baby daughter of a cjd victim is feared to be dying of the disease after being infected in the womb. Her 24 year old mother died last week after a year long battle against the illness. Now a brain scan has revealed the seven month old girl may be showing similar brain degeneration. If confirmed the case of the baby would be the first to prove that infected mothers can pass on new variant cjd to an unborn child. But a health department spokesman insisted: “There is no evidence that maternal transmission can occur.””[14] The mirror is encouraging people to eat beef because it’s editorial staff are so ignorant about the disease they believe the national pharmers union when it says that brutish beef is safe.

June 17th 2000: Pharmers have been getting their Subsidies to Spread bse-cjd but Victims are still Waiting. Class Conflict still at work.

The mirror reports, “A landmark ruling is set to open the floodgates for inquests into the deaths of people thought to have eaten bse beef. Anna pearson, 29, died in 1996 and the certificate gave the cause as cjd. But there are four types - and if a certificate does not say which one it is regarded as natural causes and there is no inquest. Anne’s husband chrsitopher, 32, of canterbury, wants the certificate to be changed to unnatural causes by new variant cjd. Now east kent coroner richard sturt has held a preliminary hearing and is to tell home secretaryt he feels there should be an inquest. If mr straw agrees it will lead to hearings into 62 oythers where pressure group Human bse foundation says there should be inquests, convinced they died of new variant cjd.”[15]

June 18th 2000

Dealler mentions a report in progress which shows that bse-cjd is commoner in the north of the country.[16]

June 30th 2000: Yet Another Mad Cow after they told everyone it couldn’t Happen Again.

The maffia and the department of health (a governmental organization run by the national pharmers union) both predicted that no Cow born after march 1996 would die of bse because of the stringent measures taken against the spread of the disease. But this prediction turns out to be inaccurate - just like all their other predictions, “For the first time, britain has identified a cow with bse born after 1 august 1996, when stringent controls were contaminated with mammalian material.”[17]

Every error is rapidly followed up by a large dose of denialism, “A cow infected with bse was found after emergency controls on the disease were introduced, it was revealed yesterday - sparking new fears of an epidemic. Experts and pressure groups called for new controls, claiming the disease could have been passed on by the animal’s mother - a method not previously proved. Agricultural minister nick brown told mps there was “no risk to food safety” since the cow, from dorset, was slaughtered at 44 months and did not enter the food chain under the 30 month rule.”[18] As usual nick brown focusses on an irrelevance. What is significant is not the age of the Cow but that it was born after the time when so-called stringent safeguards should have been working - which reveals yet again that the maffia’s stringent safeguards are no safeguards whatsoever. Politically, who’s mad enough to trust pharmers to abide by the law? If brutish Cattle were left to live out their lives many of them would not die of natural causes.

July 5th: Bse is Spreading through the Sheep Industry.

Bse and bse-cjd are brutland’s greatest exports since football hooliganism. Over the coming decades more and more livestock around the world will be dying horrible deaths knowing this great country caused their demise. But, as bse and bse-cjd spreads insidiously around the world and infects more and more livestock, pharmers in this country have been increasingly trying to pretend everything is alright and that it’s about time this great country started celebrating its beef cuisine. Unfortunately for them, the world’s foremost expert on bse-cjd believes the disease has now spread to Sheep. As a consequence, exports of Brutish Sheep will infect even more livestock around the world further boosting bse and bse-cjd fatalities. The sunday times reports, “A nobel prize-winning scientist has warned that there is increasing evidence that bse is endemic in british Sheep. Research by stanley pruisner suggests that the infective prion agent that causes bse is found in sheep but at levels which have until now been undetectable. Last week he said, “The implication of our latest work is that bse is endemic throughout the british national sheep flock.” The research uses ‘bovinised’ Mice, in which the gene that makes prion proteins is replaced by the same gene from a Cow. Such Mice react to bse prions just like Cows, but take less than 10 months to develop the disease, compared with more than three years for Cows. Fred cohen, professor of pharmacology at ucsf, said there was strong evidence that Cattle developed bse because of changes in the way Sheep carcasses were rendered into animal feed. “When scrapie-infected sheep were slaughtered, the rendering process destroyed the scrapie prions but left behind the tougher bse prions ­ to which Cattle were vulnerable” he said.”[19]

It’s interesting that whereas the origins of aids is unknown and the subject of considerable speculation, there is no such doubt as to the origins of bse. It is not known whether the disease derived from Cattle or Sheep but there is little question that its origin was brutland.

The Disaster Breaks.

July 14th 2000: Disaster Day: Government announces Cluster of Young Bse-Cjd Victims, a jump in the number of Bse-cjd Fatalities and, hold on tight, a sharp increase in the rate of increase in Bse Fatalities.

It’s amazing. Six weeks ago the statistics for annual bse-cjd fatalities hadn’t revealed any dangerous trend. Not since march 1996 when the government was forced to announce the first 10 victims of bse-cjd has there been such a momentous turning point in the pharmer-induced bse epidemic. A government press release announces three dreadful pieces of news. Firstly, a cluster of bse-cjd victims in queniborough, a rural leicestershire village. Secondly, a sudden leap in the total number of bse-cjd victims. And, finally, a substantial increase in the rate of bse-cjd fatalities.

The Bse-Cjd Cluster

Government officials highlight a bse-cjd cluster in queniborough, “Also four confirmed cases and one probable case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) have occurred in the english county of leicestershire since 1996, out of a total of 63 confirmed and 12 probable cases in the United Kingdom reported to the National CJD Surveillance Unit (NCJDSU) to date ..”[20]

This news is surprising given that the health department and maffia have always denied the existence of bse clusters. It dismissed an alleged cluster in kent where the first bse victims were officially recognized, "Experts in the human form of bse have joined an investigation into an apparent 'cluster' of five cases of the disease in leicestershire, the government revealed last night. Ministers have already been told that the high number in one county is unlikely to be chance. Government advisers are investigating whether the disease is beginning to spread more rapidly after an apparent sharp rise in victims during recent months. Until recently there had been only two leicestershire victims of the disease ... But three more cases in the county have been reported to the department of health. Lord hunt, the junior health minister, announced the leicestershire investigation in a written answer to the lords yesterday. The edinburgh cjd unit has examined previous possible clusters .. But its annual report for 1999 said there was no evidence for local clustering. It also said that allowing for delays in reporting and confirming deaths from bse-cjd there was no evidence that the rate of the disease had increased significantly."[21]

First Report of Cluster.

According to the bbc website news, this cluster was first reported at the end of 1998, “The Leicestershire CJD "cluster" was first reported in November 1998, after the first three deaths.”[22]

The Jump in the Number of Bse-cjd Fatalities.

The figures given in the media for the numbers of people afflicted with bse are notoriously variable. Lord hunt, the junior health minister, is quoted as saying .. “that the number of victims nationally is now thought to be 75, one more than in most recently published statistics. At least 67 of them have died."[23 Dealler has just been quoted above as saying that there are 63 confirmed and 12 probable cases. But whatever, the precise figure, the trend is transparent. At the end of 1999 there were 48 confirmed fatalities so the figures suggest a big increase this year.

The Rate of Increase in Bse-cjd Fatalities.

The most significant of the three announcements is that the number of new cases of bse-cjd are increasing by 20-30% a year, “Government scientists yesterday warned of a sharply accelerating trend in the incidence of human bse after studying the pattern of the disease so far. They said the number of reported cases may in fact be rising at between 20-30% a year despite the apparently varied annual death rates over the past five years.”[24] This is a dramatic revelation. The government does not publish the figures for the number of suspected cases of bse-cjd being reported in hospitals around the country so there has been no way for the public to assess the spread of the disease from that source. The annual statistics for bse-cjd fatalities do not show any reliable evidence of an increase in the spread of the disease. In fact there was a drop in the number of bse-cjd cases in 1998 suggesting the epidemic could be over the worst. It thus comes as a surprise to find that the figures for the onset of bse-cjd cases are different from the figures for annual bse-cjd fatalities. Only the rate of reported cases shows there is an alarming trend.

July 15th 2000: Ramifications of the Bse-cjd Announcements .

Hypotheses about the Cluster.

The cjdsu argues the bse-cjd cluster in queniborough is not mere chance. They suspect the common factor might be bse contamination of baby foods and school meals. Robert will of the cjdsu stated, “We have examined the victims’ occupations, where they lived and medical history. No link has been found. The disease must have come from eating affected meat.”[25]

The significance of a bse cluster is that it suggests the disease could become a lot worse in the future as the same concentration of fatalities spreads around the country.

Dealler highlights an ‘independent’ article which .. “states that Phillip Monk, a consultant in communicable diseases at Leicestershire Health Authority said it was unlikely that his county's cases were linked geographically. Rather 'it was the victim's genetic susceptibility' he said.” (Dealler dismisses such an idea). “To find 5 apparent cases taking place within such a short distance of each other will neither be found to be genetics nor random events..”[26]

Dealler puts forward his own hypothesis for the cluster, “The statistics of finding such a cluster within just 76 v-CJD cases is simply not a random coincidence and this must not be put over as such. The cases were living there for quite long periods. The county, Leicestershire, also had an excess of cases of bse but this is difficult to show as being involved. Many ideas could be put forward as to the cause but a single event e.g. a particularly infectious part of a cow entering human food locally and sold locally might fit this well.”[27] Politically, however, this explanation is a nightmare. Firstly, it implies that one Cow might have killed 5 people (180,000 Cows had to be put down but a huge number others were slaughtered for ooman consumption). What is even more interesting is that this theoretical Cow must have been in such a chronic state of infection that the pharmer must have had to drag it off his pharm and push it into the local extermination chamber to get the beef off this poor diseased jew. But, it’s quite possible it didn’t go through an abattoir and that the local yokels were involved in ritual slaughter to bloody young children to consolidate support for the multi-national beef industry.[28]

The Beef loving Ruralites of Queniborough.

A reporter provides an interesting insight into the people of queniborough - a village that most of the country has never heard of before.[29] The reporter mentions a couple of posters displayed in the village exhorting folk to keep eating jews, “They were flaunting their beef as they always do in the earthy leicestershire village of queniborough yesterday. Two weeks ago, these would have been the signposts of healthy rural life but now they read like local indignation as the village absorbed the news that four people have died of bse-cjd because of their association with the place.”[30] It’s a bit like all those rabid supporters of shotguns in america ­ the greater the number of shootings, the more vehemently the shooters defend their interests.

As is the case in many rural areas, queniborough has a rural ideology and most of the village’s inhabitants seem to be beef fanatics who eat bse-infected beef out of a patriotic love for queen, country, the landowning elite, the clergy, and other members of the over-privileged classes. Dealler picks up on this news item and mentions in his delightfully frilly liberal way that these people have been gorging on huge slabs of beef only because of a lack of knowledge about bse, “Queniborough, where adverts for beef look like local indignation. This explains just how little the people in the village were being told as to what was going on with the cases.”[31] He seems to ignore the fact that the government, the nfu, and the rest of the Animal exploitation industry, lied to them and told them that bse was perfectly safe.

Mirror Suggests there is second Cluster of Young Bse-Cjd Victims.

“A fearful village was urged not to panic yesterday after being linked to three deaths from the human form of mad cow disease. Three people linked to queniborough, leicestershire, died from the disease in 12 weeks in 1998. Two other cases of britain’s 75 known victims of the disease are linked to leicestershire. In a second cjd cluster seven people have died of the old and new types of the disease in kent, near where britain’s first bse herd was discovered.”[32]

The Bad News is Rapidly suffocated by Denialism. Health Department Tries to Dismiss Bse-Cjd as Disease of the Past - just as they did for Bse. More Subsidies for the Beef Industry are bound to Follow.

The mirror reports that the department of health swept into queniborough to encourage people to keep eating beef. The health department is desperate to placate public concern about the cluster because it doesn’t want the beef industry to suffer a fall in sales of bse-infected beef. It states the bse infection occurred many years ago - even though there is no evidence that beef currently being sold is perfectly safe, “Yesterday the health department told the 2,297 villagers, “We want to stress that these victims came into contact with the disease many years ago before there were strict controls. We hope and believe beef is now safe in this country and people will no longer get new variant cjd.”[33] And, just to make sure the villagers kept eating brutish reared bse, “Health minister lord hunt has admitted it is “unlikely” the high number of cases in the county could have happened by chance. He said the five cases were linked to infected meat eaten “many years ago”.”[34] This is exactly what they’ve been saying for the last 15 years as the corpses have piled up and its just what they’ll be saying for the next 60 years. The health department’s sole concern is protecting the interests of pharmers and the pharming industry rather than preventing more people from contracting the disease.

Over the last fifteen years, pharmers have done everything they could to ignore the paltry legislation passed by various governments to halt the spread of bse because they believed bse did not pose a health risk to oomans. Now that 70 odd people are dead they argue they fully and completely abided by all food safety regulations so they are not responsible for the fatalities. Indeed, they abided by the stringent regulations so diligently the eventual number of victims is likely to be small.

July 16th 2000: More Bad News for the Labour Government’s Cover-up of the Mad Sheep Epidemic.

The sunday times reports on the spread of bse to lambs, which the labour government is doing its best to keep quiet, "Vets have found the first evidence that sheep could have become infected with bse. Three flocks in america were this weekend being taken to laboratories for slaughter and investigation after tests showed signs of the disease. The flocks of friesian milking sheep were imported from europe to vermont within the past four years. Checks have shown that their parent flocks had eaten british-bought feed that was likely to contain material from bse-infected cows. "Four sheep were confirmed positive on july 10th for a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (tse) - the class of diseases that includes bse. Tests for scrapie, the tse normally found in sheep, have proved negative so there is a distinct possibility they have bse, said Linda Detwiler, the united startes department of agriculture vet responsible for monitoring bse and related disaeases in america. Detwiler said it would take a year for further tests to confirm whether or not the sheep have bse."[35]

July 17th 2000: Baby Food and Schools meals might be to Blame for Young Bse-Cjd Victims - No, its the Labour and Tory Politicians who forced schools to Continue putting Beef on the Menu.

The mirror carries a second major article, a double-page spread, on the bse-cjd cluster, “Robert will, head of the cjd surveillance unit, said he believed the foods (school meals and baby food) may be responsible for the high proportion of young victims. Will said one reason why new variant cjd hits young people disproportionately could be the amount of mechanically extracted meat in food in the 1980s. It was widely used in baby foods and likely to have been common in school meals. Such foods could have contained remnants of the spinal cords, which becomes highly infected when a cow develops bse. Dr erik millstone, of sussex university’s science policy research unit, said it was a “plausible explanation” for the higher rates of disease among the young.”[36] This explanation suggests the young are dying because they have consumed the most bse contaminated beefburgers and pies. There are two flaws in this hypothesis: firstly, that one of the victims was a vegetarian for 12 years; and, secondly, another victim used to eat only the best quality beef, “Louise loved good food. She never had hamburgers - hated them. She always enjoyed the best cuts of meat.”[37]

July 17th 2000: Mirror Misinforms Readers about the Bse-Cjd Epidemic.

The mirror gives more confusing data about bse-cjd fatalities, “There were 67 victims of new cjd between march 1985 and march this year. Only 11 are still alive. Official figures for the 52 dead reveal that

8 were aged 10-19;

23 were aged 20-29

14 were in their 30s,

three in their 40s, and

four in their 50s.”[38]

The editor of the mirror is a beef loving, pharmer-supporting, politically conventional person who believes 67 victims, with 11 still alive, means 52 fatalities. The mirror produces a Q&A section on bse which is encourages people to keep eating bse-infected brutish beef.

July 18th 2000: Anderson Predicts Long Drawn out epidemic with Total Fatalities at the Bottom range of Estimates.

After these shock announcements the government seems to be desperately in need of an authoritative voice to reassure the public - although it is odd that it thinks the public is frightened about such news. Amazingly up pops roy anderson. He suggests there is a remote possibility the epidemic could be big (millions of fatalities) but believes it is more likely to be in the bottom range of estimates. The independent article does not indicate what this range is, “A leading scientist warned yesterday that britain faces an epidemic of cjd cases caused by bse-infected beef, after the discovery of an apparent cluster of cases around a leicestershire town. Roy anderson believes the country faces a “long, slow” epidemic .. “The worst scenario of millions of deaths is unlikely,” said anderson. “It is more likely the number of deaths will be in the bottom of the range.””[39] Dealler’s comment on this is, “Not particularly surprising as this data was fairly clear some time ago .”[40] Anderson’s interjection seems to be designed to allay fears of a massive epidemic.

July 18th 2000: Different figures for Bse Fatalities.

As if to emphasize the confusion surrounding the bse-cjd figures being bandied around, “The Advisory committee (SEAC) was quoted as saying in a statement late on Monday that, "There are now 76 definite and probable cases, including seven probables still alive. The number of cases reported now indicated a statistically significant rising trend of about 20 percent to 30 percent per annum."”[41] In other words, 76 victims, 69 dead.

July 21st 2000: Pharmers Free to Spread Bse around the World.

Dealler reports that ‘farmers guardian’ 21.7.00 states that bse-on-the-bone can now be exported. Bone-in beef back at exports abattoirs. Export approved slaughter houses are permitted to supply bone-in beef to the UK domestic market from today. This would only be for cattle agreed under the Date Based Export Scheme. At the moment the Government are having difficulty in getting farmers even to submit beef for DBES slaughter at the 2 abattoirs at which this is permitted (simply because the costs are too high).”[42]

July 22nd 2000: Another Victim from a Pharming Area.

Most newspapers carry the story of another bse-cjd fatality. The ‘mirror’ produces another big article on bse-cjd - its third in a week. The times points out the pharmers’ victim lived in a rural area, “Kirsten garven, 20, from the farming village of waverton, near chester died two weeks ago after 14 months of the fatal brain disease .. Her parents attacked politicians for not doing more to protect the public. Mrs garven said last night, “It’s greed and profit. That’s why we cannot let them get away with it.””[43]

July 22nd 2000: WATCH OUT Europe - Brutish Beef Hooligans on their Way - Brutish Beef could soon be on sale in Europe.

“Normal beef exports from northern ireland to the continent could resume “within weeks” as a result of the low incidence of bse in the province, david byrne, the ec food safety commissioner said yesterday.”[44]

July 22nd 2000: I’m Not Impressed with those Sheep (And they probably ain’t so hot about you, Biped).

“Claims that abnormal prion proteins have been found in american sheep are setting alarm bells ringing in the u.s. But bse experts are unimpressed. The us government ordered the incineration of 376 sheep from vermont, after suggestions that four of the flock were infected with bse. If the four cases are confirmed as bse, they will be the first sheep known to be infected by farm feed, and would raise a spectre of more human infection.”[45] It ought to be pointed out that it is not merely the government nor the Animal exploitation industry which dismisses the concern of bse in Sheep - it is also scientists such as richard lacey and john collinge.

July 22nd 2000: The US plays Politics with Lamb but the Brutes don’t Play Politics with Cows?

New scientist reports on the week’s events in a very low key editorial followed up by an article which mentions the problems in one paragraph. It might have been thought the new evidence might have provoked a more forthright analysis given that it’s not every day of the millenia that half the country is threatened with extinction, “Anyone who ate british meat or fed it to their kids in the past twenty years will be feeling distinctly queasy this week. The outbreak of bse-cjd seems to be gathering momentum, as new cases are discovered and the first cluster emerges in queniborough.”[46]

The article then explores the bse in lamb issue, “But another cluster of related illness this week tells us more about politics than science. A few hundred sheep are to be destroyed in the u.s. Now signs of prion disease have been detected in four animals, giving washingtonm an excuse to incinerate them all. Officials hint darkly that it might be bse. However, there is no real  evidence. Some commentators suspect that washington is ostentatiously destroying these sheep before really finding out what ails them simply to demonstrate the government’s zeal in defending the u.s. against the dreaded british plague .. .”[47]

July 25th 2000: Dealler’s Suspicions about the Long Term Trend.

Dealler comments on the rapid rise in the number of bse-cjd cases over the last few months, “The exact reason for this rise is unclear if the incubation time is taken to be extremely low (e.g. 5 years) but much more reasonable if it is taken as being around 20-40 years (with stragglers above and below this). When that is done it is possible to calculate almost any number of cases taking place over the next 20 years ...”[48]

July was just one Big Disaster for the Pharming Industry - Long may it Continue.

Since the two week public outrage in march 1996 over the announcement of the first 10 bse-cjd victims, the bse scandal has been pushed into oblivion by both the tory and labour governments working in collusion with the maffia, the nfu, the meat and livestock commission, and other pharmers’ organizations. Over the last four years there have been a number of grim announcements as scientists have made new discoveries about bse and bse-cjd but nothing that has outraged public opinion or rattled the government’s cover up of the epidemics. However, this last month there has been a quantum increase in scientific concern about the spread of bse-cjd. The public grazes on whilst the epidemic shapes up on the horizon.

1. a Cow born after the imposition of stringent regulations contracts bse;

2. the cluster of bse-cjd victims;

3. the leap in the total number of bse-cjd fatalities;

4. the jump in rate of increase in reported bse-cjd cases - 20-30% a year;

5. Sheep might have contracted bse.

The labour government believes all it needs to do to restore public confidence in the livestock industry is to make sure that brutish Cattle, no matter how much they might be infected with bse, are slaughtered before the disease appears - just as they do with Sheep which carry scrapie. By slaughtering Cattle before the disease appears, governments can pretend the Animals are healthy. The labour government hopes this tactic will also fool the european commission into resuming the export bse-cjd around the world. But the global situation is changing. The brutish disease is spreading around the world and as the number of victims increases this will make these countries even more reluctant to import brutish beef because public opinion won’t want to take the risk.

The possibility that bse in brutish herds will disappear is likely to be small. This country has had scrapie for 200 years. The maffia spent a decade telling the public that bse was like scrapie. If this is the case then, just as it hasn’t been possible to eradicate scrapie, there is no way of eradicating bse.

The best thing that could happen in this country is the complete, utter, and permanent, collapse of the Animal exploitation industry. The great opportunity created by the spread of bse is that this will lead to a worldwide ban on the Animal exploitation industry which is currently massacring hundreds of billions of Animals.

August 2nd 2000: Seac warns Dentists.

No Action Required at Present.

Seac warns dentists that there is a theoretical risk of passing on bse-cjd through using contaminated instruments, “The human form of mad cow disease could be transmitted by dental instruments, scientists warned yesterday. Dentists have been told sterilization procedures do not always destroy the agent that causes bse-cjd and the infection could be passed between patients with the same instruments. The government body set up to look into such diseases, seac, has recommended that further research be carried out but does not believe dental procedures should be changed at present.”[49] This is another bit of bad news for pharmers who would rather not have this issue discussed in public. However, there are deeper issues involved here.

Why don’t they just come out and say it that Bse is a Highly Contagious Disease in Blood - just like Aids.

Ostensibly seac’s statement is just a bit of scientific advise being given by one group of scientists to another. It is possible, however, that this is another scientific effort to warn the public, behind the government’s back, about the threat posed by bse-cjd. The government points out that it has already issued private guidelines to dentists about the dangers of spreading bse-cjd so the fact that seac scientists are making their statement in public is their way of indicating they are not happy with what the government is doing.

What the seac scientists are prevented from screaming about is that bse-cjd is a highly contagious disease which can be passed on through ooman blood and milk and that the disease is on a par with hiv-aids in terms of lethality, fatalness, contagiousness, and prevalence.[50] The amount of bse likely to be found on medical/dental instruments is miniscule. This point is made not to dismiss the risk involved, given that there have been a number of cases where people have caught similar diseases in this way, but to suggest that if health warnings are being given about this then why aren’t they also being given warnings about other forms of ways in which the disease is transmitted? If tiny amounts of bse-cjd on medical/dental instruments poses a ooman health risk then so does any exchange of blood between oomans i.e. during rough sex, fights, sharing needles, etc. But the government has never warned people against these forms of transmission. The reason for this is that the government has been trying to resist the notion that bse-cjd can be passed on through ooman blood. This stance derives from the earliest days of the bse crisis. The government refused to accept that bse is a disease carried in Cattle blood because if it accepted this proposition it would have to ban all sales of beef. When labour was elected to power it fought a long and dirty campaign against scientists demanding that something be done to prevent the transmission of bse-cjd through ooman blood transfusions. Eventually the government was forced into action and agreed to treat all blood used in the blood transfusion service to minimize the spread of disease. But, it continued to refuse to admit not merely that bse is in Cattle blood but that bse-cjd is in ooman blood. If the labour government admits bse-cjd is in ooman blood then it will have to state that any exchange of blood between oomans is going to spread the disease - this will mean campaigns about sex, sharing needles, etc. The government is currently fighting off the latest scientific campaign for measures to prevent the spread of bse-cjd through contaminated medical instruments. The cost of disposing of all medical implements after they’d be used once would be huge and yet if this does not happen then this will spread bse-cjd. The oxford boys will doubtlessly be called in to estimate the cost of disposing of medical implements against the cost of the ooman lives lost.

One of the oddest states of affairs about the bse controversy is that the public does not regard bse as the lethal and highly contagious disease that it is. On the contrary, it is seen more as a fictious disease than a real one. The comparison with the aids epidemic is revealing. When the aids epidemic started to appear in brutland there was widescale public fear of the disease. The disease was believed to be highly contagious and the public’s fear of contamination was acute. People would avoid aids sufferers and not touch anything that they’d touched, etc. The public image of aids was fostered by scientists but it was grossly exaggerated by tory politicians, the tory media, and the rest of the tory establishment, who were grossly homophobic.[51] They exaggerated the dangers of the disease as a means of castigating gays. The public’s fear of hiv as highly contagious was shaped considerably by society’s homophobia. Although this homophobia relented towards the end of the 1990s, the hysteria over aids at least brought the benefit that most people in society learnt the safety lessons to prevent the spread of the disease.

The situation with bse is different. In the first half of the 1990s there was a tiny degree of fear about the disease but it was only in 1996 when the existence of bse-cjd was announced that the fear erupted. However this quickly dissipated. The tory government and the rest of the establishment did not whip up animosity towards pharmers over bse-cjd as it had done gays over aids. On the contrary, considering the tory establishment consisted of pharmers it did everything it could to present bse and bse-cjd as being similar to flu viruses. They both came to be regarded as cuddly, irrelevant diseases. Because society did not loathe pharmers in the same way as it did gays, there were no outbreaks of antipathy towards pharmers and society never came to fear bse-cjd. As a consequence, the public is far less fearful of bse-cjd than hiv-aids, and they haven’t learnt any of the lessons needed to avoid the disease. The one consolation is that the government can argue that the warnings they’d given over hiv-aids would also protect people from bse-cjd but, then again, if they stated that both diseases were equally dangerous then this might make double the impression on people’s attitudes. When people have causal sex there may be some fear about aids-hiv but few have any fear about contracting bse-cjd. There are many occassions where people won’t have sex with because they fear contracting hiv-aids but nobody refuses for fear of bse-cjd.

Worse still is that people have a diminishing fear of contracting bse-cjd from beef. And yet, if it is possible to contract bse-cjd through tiny residues on medical instruments then what about the massive quantities of the disease that people ingest when they eat brutish beef? Meat eaters ignore the possibility of bse in blood and eat huge quantities of blood infested meat contaminated by bse-cjd. If there was the possibility that meat was contaminated by hiv-aids then meat eaters wouldn’t go anywhere it, but the possibility that it could be contaminated by bse makes no difference to them. It’s remarkable that the department of health has not issued health warnings about bse-cjd in the same way they did about hiv-aids given that bse-cjd is similar to hiv-aids. There could hardly be any greater evidence of pharmers’ domination of parliament and society. Amazingly pharmers have managed to do exactly the same over global burning which is blamed on the fossil fuel industry.

August 2nd 2000: Lorry Loads of Compensation for Pharmers, NONE for stricken Miners.

The thatcher government crushed the miners and the mining industry because it was a loss making industry whilst at the same time handing out billions of pounds in subsidies to pharmers. The labour government continues to pursue this policy, “Thousands of sick miners whose compensation has been held up by red tape are dying before they get their cash. Yesterday a high court judge highlighted the scandal and ordered the government to speed up the payment of £4 billion to former pitmen. He also demanded a report on why more than 100,000 miners suffering from deadly dust diseases may have to wait several more years for their money.”[52]; “200 former miners are dying every month from lung disease. Two years ago they were promised compensation in the biggest legal settlement ever reached in this country. Shamefully, only one mioner has been paid out in full since that ruling.”[53]

August 4th 2000: The Cjd Surveillance Unit Report

The cjd surveillance unit in edinburgh issues a report about the increase in bse-cjd cases. This is reported in a number of papers.

Even the Denialist Sun Reports on Bse Epidemic.

The sun reports on the bad news about the rise in bse-cjd fatalities but only in a 7 paragraph article, “Deaths from the human form of mad cow disease are rising by a third every year, a shocking report reveals today.”[54]

Independent.

Dealler mentions an article in the ‘independent’ stating that bse-cjd deaths are increasing by a third each year, “This comes from the annual report of the CJD Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh. Although it is not clear from their document it can be shown that the rate of reporting of cases has gone up by approximately 23% per annum since the disease was originally announced. The information also came out in the Lancet this week and it seems that the data there is much more exacting to show that the effect could not be due to random cases appearing. The figures point to between 25 and 30 new cases by the end of this year, compared with 17 for the whole of 1999.”[55]

BBC News’ Website on Health.

The bbc website news points out that the cjdsu scientists believe they can get a more accurate picture of the increase in the bse-cjd epidemic by exploring the onset of the disease i.e. the time when the victim first experiences the symptoms of the disease, rather than focussing on the date when the victims died, “The number of reported cases of vCJD has increased by an average of 23% each year since 1994. The study was led by Professor Robert Will of the CJD Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh. The researchers analysed data about vCJD infections and deaths. They talked to relatives of patients to find out when symptoms of the disease first became apparent.”[56]

Bse-cjd Figures at the beginning of July 2000 - 75 cases.

“At the start of July the unit had identified a total of 75 cases of vCJD. Of those 69 patients had died, and 59 cases had been confirmed by examination of the brain after death. The 16 unconfirmed cases, six of whom were alive, were classified as probable vCJD. Writing in The Lancet medical journal, the investigators comment that, "given that further cases with onsets in 1999 and 2000 will probably be identified in future months, the number of onsets clearly increases each year"”[57] In other words, 75 victims; 69 dead & 6 alive; 59 confirmed bse-cjd & 16 unconfirmed).

August 6th 2000: Another Queniborough Victim.

Dealler reports a ‘news of the world’ article dated 6.8.2000, “New CJD victim fear Martyn Wormleighton, 19, died four months ago at Wigston Leics, just four miles from the village of Queniborough where 5 other CJD victims appeared.”[58] What is life coming to in this country when it’s the news of the world that reports this sort of incident first?

August 7th 2000: Milk at Issue Again.

Dealler mentions an article in the guardian that the maffia are to conduct experiments to rule out bse in milk - so clearly no bias involved in these experiments then! “Announced by Nick Brown, the Minister for Agriculture Fisheries and Food it came as a result of the Food Standards Agency asked scientists to carry out a 3 year study into the possible links 'as soon as possible'. They are also being told to re-examine previous studies which have given milk and diary products the all-clear. The inquiry would cost 800,000 pounds. It came from the worry that bse was passed from cow to calf and no actual method by which this was carried out was seen.[59] Dealler goes on to state that this needs explanation: The experiments in which milk from infected Cattle were injected into Mice and fed to Cattle were poorly designed and would pick up only relatively large amounts of infectivity. The fact that Cattle become infected when extremely young and some did not get fed with meat and bone meal suggested that it was the milk that was responsible. Also, the fact that we are still seeing cattle with BSE born after the last feed ban in 1996 suggests that another mode of transmission; either vertical transmission or another horizontal transmission mode is still taking place. No doubt this will come out later.

August 10th 2000: Another Murder.

Dealler reveals another bse-cjd fatality, “Anita Bradshaw dies of vCJD. This is a 30 year old woman that died on 27.7.00. The husband claims that it was due to her working in a butcher’s shop 14 years ago.”[60]

August 10th 2000: First Public announcement of the scale of the Bse-Cjd Epidemic - 136,000 fatalities. The Oxford Boys use Statistics to diminish the Political significance of the Announcement.

Oxford Boys in Action Again.

It isn’t long before roy anderson, a member of seac, is back in the media again to handle this mini-crisis over the bse-cjd epidemic. He’s being seen more and more frequently in the media whenever the bse-cjd becomes a political issue. His team of epidemiologists at oxford university i.e. ghani, ferguson, and donnelly, publish a paper in ‘Nature’, a prestigious scientific journal, giving their estimates of the likely fatalities during the course of the bse-cjd epidemic. This is followed up by an intense campaign to get the paper discussed in all sections of the media.

By way of a preamble, it should be mentioned that anderson is no longer at oxford university. It was reported he’d left oxford may 10th and taken up a new appointment at imperial on june 8th. The questions which arise then are whether this paper is an old one, which has taken its usual tortuous progression through the scientific hierarchy before being accepted for publication, or whether it is a rush job as a response to the government’s dramatic announcement on july 14th of an increase in the rate of bse-cjd fatalities. In other words, is this paper out of date but serving the useful purpose of downplaying current estimates of the scale of the epidemic or does it take into account the government’s recent findings? Anderson’s role in the bse and bse-cjd disasters has been chronicled in both tf10 and tf16. For an overview of his role in these disasters see addenda item 4: ‘Oxford Boys’.

The Publication.

The jist of the oxford boys’ paper is as follows, “We show here that the current mortality data are consistent with between 63 and 136,000 cases among the population known to have a susceptible genotype (about 40% of the total population), with on average less than two cases of vcjd arising from the consumption of one infected bovine. Between 1980 and roughly 1996, about 750,000 cattle infected with bse were slaughtered for human consumption in great britain. From the vcjd incidence in 1999, we can substantially reduce the uncertainty in the upper bound of the total number of cases among people with the susceptible genotype. Our earlier analyzes showed that if fewer than 15 cases arose in 1999 in any age group, the upper bound on the number of cases in this population was approximately 500,000. This is reduced to 136,000 when the incidence in 1999 is combined with the observed stable age structure. (Since only two people are likely to get the disease from one Cow). This suggests a substantial species barrier .. If the average annual incidence of ncjd over the next three years is fewer than 15 cases, then the maximum total number of cases would fall to approximately 20,000.”[61]

Highlighting the Main Political Points of the Publication.

The main political points about this paper are firstly, that this is the first time a government-sanctioned estimate for the maximum number of bse-cjd fatalities has been made public. This is a massive number of fatalities for this pharmers’ disease. It is shocking. Secondly, like so many previous reports from the oxford boys, the political impact of this report is to downplay public anxieties about the pending epidemic - the last thing the authors want is for the public to start stringing up pharmers - especially when they’re doing such sterling work forcing the government to steal from hospitals and schools in order to reduce petrol taxes. Thirdly, it is believed there is only one bit of information left to be discovered before it should be possible to provide a fairly accurate estimate of the scale of the bse-cjd epidemic. Dealler points out that .. “because of further data being available now, it was possible to state that the total epidemic size now depended in calculation on the mean incubation period.”[62]

Highlighting the Main Points of the Publication.

A number of points about the oxford boys’ report need highlighting:-

* the oxford boys’ statistical analysis suggests fatalities will be somewhere between 63 and 136,000 people. However, given that the minimum estimate of 63 has already been exceeded this suggests the entire analysis is tilted towards an underestimate.

* the oxford boys believe only 40% of the population is susceptible to the disease.

* it is estimated that oomans consumed 750,000 bse-infected Cattle between 1980-1996. This is one of the most optimistic evaluations.

* it is implied that no bse-infected beef has been sold since 1996. Unfortunately, this is a fairy story. See addenda item no.1 which highlights the many ways which are likely to perpetuate the spread of bse. Addenda item no.2 highlights the multiplicity of ways that bse-cjd is likely to continue spreading through the ooman population.

* the consumption of 750,000 bse-infected Cattle is estimated to cause up to 136,000 cases of bse-cjd. Although this suggests that an individual would have to eat 5.5 Cows in order to die of bse-cjd, the authors argue that, in reality, an infected Cow would infect only 2 people. This could be a gross underestimate. It is also a dramatic change from their previous estimate, “A year ago, the Wellcome Trust Centre suggested that there could be 100 cases of vCJD for each infected cow.”[63]

* the oxford boys suggest there is an “observed stable age structure” in bse-cjd fatalities to date. Dealler is critical of this assumption, “The Nature article .. uses the lack of any change in the age distribution of cases since the beginning of the epidemic - humans infected at the same time in the 1980s should by rights be older when dying of disease by now ­ and other aspects. All a bit hopeful in that the incubation period/case number shape of the graph may well change.”[64]

* the oxford boys predicted in january 2000 that if fewer than 15 people died in 1999 the maximum number of bse-cjd fatalities would be 500,000. There were fewer than 15. As a result they bring the maximum down to 136,000. They then argued that if the average number of cases per year over the next three years (2000, 2001, 2002) is 15 the maximum number of fatalities is likely to drop from 136,000 to 20,000. If the oxford boys have not taken the most up to date figures into consideration then the sudden spurt of new cases of bse-cjd means that total fatalities are likely to far exceed 20,000.

* the authors point out that the estimate of the maximum number of fatalities, 136,000, is based on the assumption of an incubation period of 60 years and a stable age structure. This is one of the few times the oxford boys have actually adopted a worst case factor. An incubation period of 60 years is just about as extreme as it is possible to go since the average life expectancy is that much greater. It is believed that if the incubation period is 5 years there will be only 63 fatalities.

* the authors suggest the species barrier is much more substantial than they previously estimated. In the past they believed a bse-infected Cow would cause 100 fatalities but now they believe it is likely to be merely 2. This is why their estimate of the maximum number of fatalities has dropped from 500,000 to 136,000.

The main scientific point that needs to be made about this article is the substantial increase in the estimate of the effectiveness of the species barrier. However, it needs to be recognized that the new estimate has been reached only through a statistical analysis - there is no actual scientific evidence about the species barrier.

The Political Orchestration of the Bse-Cjd Epidemic.

The facts and figures of this report are one thing; the goals and intentions of the oxford boys are another; and the way this report is conveyed in the media is a third issue. The oxford boys did not merely write an article which was peer reviewed, published in a highly respected scientific journal and then made available in libraries should anyone be interested in what they had to say. Their intention was not simply to quietly put scientific figures into the public domain but to ensure that public opinion was shaped by their analysis of the epidemic.

First of all, it seems highly coincidental that their report should be published a mere three weeks after the latest eruption in the bse-cjd crisis when the government hints for the first time there could be an epidemic.

Secondly, the oxford boys must have sent out copies of their report to all the main media news agencies to publicize their report. They must also have talked to journalists about the significance of the paper. They must also have sent out review copies to various journalists hoping for reviews to be written. It was noted that when the independent interviewed anderson a few weeks ago[65] there was no mention any figures so there must have been a publicity embargo on the details at that time.

It is transparent the oxford boys were engaged in a highly orchestrated publicity campaign about their report. The questions about this are firstly, the degree of orchestration involved and, secondly, who was involved in the orchestration. The following sections look at the way the report is covered in the media.

The Bbc.

The bbc’s 8am news (and all other national news programmes during the rest of the day) carry a small article about the report. The bbc news is supposedly independent, impartial, and objective, and yet it presents this report in a blatantly politically way. It doesn’t explode with indignation that so many people could die. On the contrary, it is upbeat and optimistic as if gregg easterbrook has written their lines for them. The line taken is ‘the latest research shows there is good news about the bse-cjd epidemic. Instead of 500,000 people dying it has now been estimated the figure is going to be much smaller, 136,000. So everything’s alright and we now have reason to celebrate.’ The news then moves on to more crucial matters - the foreign office stitching up president mugabe again.

The bbc news presents the report as a great bargain for the brutish public - ‘you thought half a million were going to die well now it’s only 136,000’. But wait a minute. The bbc, let alone any other part of the brutish media, has never reported that 500,000 people are likely to die in the bse-cjd epidemic. Bbc new readers have never sat ashen faced before the public and stated there is likely to be a gross epidemic in which a tenth of the population is likely to die - this is primarily because they have always assumed there wouldn’t be an epidemic at all let alone one of this gargantuan scale and, secondarily, because the maffia and the nfu would never allow them to make such an announcement. Admittedly, if they had done so nobody would have taken the slightest bit of interest but the fact remains that the figure of half a million dead has never been mentioned in public before. The political value of the half million figure is plainly that it serves to diminish the threat posed by the bse-cjd crisis by suggesting the epidemic won’t be as bad as had been previously thought. The fact that for the first time on national news there has been an admittance that 136,000 people could die is almost completely overshadowed by the bbc’s manipulation of the news. Instead of people being shocked that so many were likely to die they are made to feel grateful that it won’t be as bad as government statisticians once surmised. Never has there been a time when the deaths of so many people has been greeted so matter-of-factly and treated with an attitude of “let’s just get on with life” - and, believe it or not, when a news’ journalist interviewed a member of the public about this threat this was the cliche they used.

The Bbc New’s Website on Health.

The bbc’s website takes the same political line firstly that the epidemic is not going to be as bad as they’ve just made out that it might have been; secondly, there isn’t going to be an epidemic and, even if 136,000 people die, this can’t be called an epidemic. The reason for the downgrading of the epidemic is the statistical analysis suggesting the species barrier is more effective than before, “Dr Azra Ghani, one of the authors of the study, said that a species barrier ruled out an epidemic. "Because the case numbers have been going up but not as dramatically as could have been the case, we believe the agent is less infectious. That is because of a species barrier which simply means it is difficult for the agent to pass from cow to humans."”[66]; “The Wellcome Trust team said the reason for the fall was because they believe it is harder for humans to catch vCJD than previously thought. "The current data suggest that, on average, no more than two cases of vCJD could arise from the consumption of one maximally infectious bovine," they said. A year ago, the Wellcome Trust Centre suggested that there could be 100 cases of vCJD for each infected cow. "This suggests a substantial species barrier, given that thousands of people might eat material from a single animal."”[67] All that is left to do now is estimate the incubation period, “Scientists believe that an epidemic of the human form of mad cow disease is unlikely. Research carried out at the University of Oxford, UK, suggests that the likelihood of millions of people dying from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) are slim. However, researchers have suggested that deaths could still reach as high as 136,000. Previous studies have suggested that millions of people could be at risk and last year European Union scientists estimated that 500,000 could die from vCJD. But the researchers, at Oxford's Wellcome Trust Centre, say the total number of deaths could be under 100, or as high as 136,000. The final figure, they say, depends on how long the disease takes to incubate - something scientists have yet to discover.”[68]

The Guardian.

Just like the bbc, guardian reporter tim radford doesn’t take the line - ‘oh my god it looks like pharmers could end up murdering 136,000 people’ but, as the pharmer inspired-headline has it, ‘Victims of cjd fewer than Feared’. He goes on to state, “Variant cjd could ultimately claim 136,000 lives, according to oxford scientists. But this figure is the worst case scenario .. this will be the number of deaths if the incubation period for the disease is 60 years or more. If the incubation period was less than 20 years then there could be as few as 63 cases. If the incubation period stretched almost to lifetime length, then there were likely to be 136,000. “If the average annual incidence of vcjd over the next three years is fewer than 15 cases, then the maximum number of cases would fall to 20,000,” they wrote.”[69] The horror of 136,000 brutish people dying from bse-cjd is made to seem far less horrifying from the perspective that it could have been half a million.

Mirror.

Quite coincidentally, the mirror employs the same political spin - yes, 136,000 could die but it won’t be millions, “The human form of mad cow disease could kill as many as 136,000 people in britain, experts warned yesterday. But they dismissed fears that new variant cjd will eventually claim millions of lives.”[70]

The mirror points out the huge difference between the european union and the oxford boys over their estimates of the number of people likely to die as a result of the consumption of one Cow, “European union scientific advisers had previously predicted that a single animal infected with bse could expose up to 500,000 people to cjd. But a new study based at oxford university says the rate is likely to average no more than two cases per cow or bull. The researchers wrote: “This suggests a substantial species barrier, given that thousands of people might eat material from a single animal.”[71]

Independent.

The independent carries an article with the pharmer-inspired headline, ‘Scientists scale down predictions of CJD epidemic.’[72] As if to ensure that its readers get the message that the pending bse-cjd disaster is alright because it will be nothing like as bad as had previously been thought, the article points out that, “Scientists have ruled out a large-scale epidemic of vcjd .. A new analysis suggests that fewer than 6,000 people are likely to be infected. A year ago, a similar analysis suggested that many hundreds of thousands could eventually die of the illness.”; “The biggest that could be shown was 136,000 with an i.p. of 60 years but a more reasonable figure of 6,000 was put forward.”[73]

The Optimistic Assumptions adopted by the Report.

The oxford boys’ report is based almost entirely upon the most optimistic assumptions:-

only 750,000 bse-infected Cattle were consumed between 1980-1996;

one Cow infects only 2 individuals;

only 40% of the ooman population is susceptible;

oomans can contract the disease only by eating infected beef;

there is an observed stable age structure, and, finally,

there is a substantial species barrier.

These six assumptions take optimism to an extreme. The more of an underestimate they are, the bigger the eventual epidemic. Despite the kaffuffle over anderson’s departure from oxford, the oxford boys show an amazing political ability to provide statistics about the future course of the bse-cjd epidemic at exactly the right moment when the government needs help to allay public fears over the prospect of a bse epidemic. The oxford boys take only one factor at its worst case - the incubation period of 60 years.

The Oxford Boys’ Statistical Conjuring Trick - Hey, wait a minute didn’t you say the disease would kill only thousands?

In january 2000, the oxford boys’ proposed that the maximum number of bse-cjd fatalities would be 500,000. By august their most pessimistic assumption, their upper estimate, dropped from 500,000 to 136,000. They used this to put a completely different complexion on their conclusions rather than just announcing that they believed that, at most, 136,000 people might die. However, this figure looks enormous when compared to the oxford boys’ best guess estimate that there would be only thousands of bse-cjd fatalities, “The latest figures suggest that the final death toll is likely to be on the scale of thousands rather than millions.”[74] The authors are not quite so clear on their lowest, most optimistic, estimate. It is not known what their lowest estimate was in january 2000. The current figure minimum figure is 63. The fact that this is already out of date shows another aspect of the bias in their work.

Conclusions

The oxford boys are really on the political ball. A mere three weeks after the government hints for the first time (but does not admit) that there is likely to be a bse-cjd epidemic, they produce a major report which is peer reviewed, accepted by a highly respected journal, printed, copies sent out to reviewers, reviews written, and then published/broadcast. In a pluralistic society it is an amazing coincidence that all of the media articles take the same line - that the epidemic is not going to be as bad as had previously been believed. The public are therefore not shocked or angered by the estimate of 136,000 fatalities - they are relieved it’s going to be only 500,000. None of the reviewers question where the half million figure comes from or note that it seems a highly convenient context to provide for what is, in effect, the first estimate of the size of the epidemic. The livestock are being eased into their graves with all the subtlety of a ooman slowly being boiled to death in cannibals’ pot.

What is even more strange is why the oxford boys bothered to publish this report at all given that, according to dealler, there’s nothing new in this data, “Not particularly surprising as this data was fairly clear some time ago.”[75] The statistical fact that bse-cjd fatalities are growing at a rate of 20-30% a year is far more devastating than the statistical speculation that the total number of bse fatalities is likely to be much less than previously thought.

It is not clear, however, whether the oxford boys’ report took into account the recent upsurge in bse-cjd fatalities. Given the time needed to peer review their report and get it published in a journal, then discuss the issue with selected journalists, they must have started their publicity campaign months before the government made its announcement about the new increase in fatalities. They would have been able to include this info only if they were in collusion with the government. The appearance of the report three weeks after the government’s announcement makes it seem as if the oxford boys did take into account the latest figures but this could only be true if they had been given the figures by the government months earlier.

August 22nd 2000: Narang’s Views.

The mirror strangely goes out on a limb to cover harash narang’s opinion about the scale of the bse epidemic. He is much more pessimistic than the oxford boys, “The human form of bse could hit one in 10 of the population, experts fear. And they warned that the north-east may be sitting on a cjd timebomb. The region has seen a cluster of nine deaths - but scientists say it could be 10 times higher. Virologist harash narang, who has conducted brain biopsies on hundreds of suspected victims, said government experts at the cjd su have looked only at tests on a “selected sample” and the true figures will never be known.”[76] As far as is known no other part of the media bothered to report this estimate. They are all perfectly content to focus solely on what is a government sanctioned, i.e. pharmer-friendly, report.

August 29th 2000: Random Tests on Cows Discover Bse still Flourishing.

“Random tests on 3,000 cows last year revealed 18 had bse without showing clinical symptoms. Such checks will be increased to 10,000 this year and there will be surveys on 3,000 animals which die unexpectedly on farms or have to be slaughtered through illness or injury.”[77 There is no information as to what was done during these random tests. It is possible the Animals were chosen at random from herds all over the country and then slaughtered. If the tests are carried out on Animals who are still alive and kicking then this is not going to produce a very accurate estimate of the prevalence of bse if those Animals who have died are not examined. In fact there is no need to have killed the healthy Cows when the dead ones could have been examined.

August 29th 2000: More Catastrophic Publicity for the Pharming Community.

Preamble.

Despite the discovery of the statistical evidence pointing towards a bse-cjd epidemic, there is still no definitive scientific evidence about many aspect of the disease e.g. how much bse is required to become lethal in oomans, the cause of the transformation of bse prions into bse-cjd prions, the nature of bse-cjd during its incubation period, the length of its incubation period, etc. So it is all too likely that, in the future, there will be many announcements about these outstanding scientific issues as scientific evidence gradually falls in line with the statistical evidence. It has to be suggested that it is now all the way downhill for the pharming community as more evidence emerges about bse’s lethality and as the number of bse-cjd victims increases.

The flurry of publicity over the first semi-official announcement of the estimated scale of the bse-cjd epidemic, dissipates within days and for the following couple of weeks it was all quiet again on the bse-cjd publicity front. It doesn’t last, however, as a second catastrophic announcement is made which points in the direction of a major bse-cjd epidemic. A paper written by john collinge and his colleagues at the medical research council’s prion unit based at st mary’s hospital in west london is published in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences and the issues it raises are highlighted by the media. Collinge’s results are treated as the lead item by major parts of the media. Unfortunately, the latest bse ‘scare story’ is sparked by Animal experiments.

Wot’s it all arbart?

The essential political point about collinge’s paper is that it undermines oxford boys’ key assumption in their statistical prediction of the scale of the bse-cjd epidemic. The oxford boys believed that the species barrier plays a critical role in limiting the scale of the bse-cjd epidemic. However, according to collinge it is nothing like as substantial as they suggested. Collinge also disagrees with another of the optimistic assumptions adopted by the oxford boys. They assumed the sole source of bse-cjd was bse in beef. Collinge reveals, however, that oomans are threatened not merely by bse contamination in beef but in all other types of meat and by bse-cjd contamination from other oomans. So even if bse was eradicated from brutish beef, there could still be an epidemic caused by the bse in other livestock Animals. And if this source was also eradicated, there could be an epidemic fuelled solely by oomans contaminating each other with bse-cjd. The fact that there are multiple sources of contamination means the bse epidemic is likely to be larger than predicted by the oxford boys.

Overall then, collinge puts a huge question mark against the oxford boys’ conclusions. In effect, whilst the they believe the huge quantities of bse generated by Cattle have just disappeared into the environment and are now out of harm’s way, collinge suggests there may be reservoirs of bse prions in Cattle and all other livestock species, both ooman and Animal, which will ensure the prions continue to recycle through the ooman population. Bse, and bse-cjd, prions are almost indestructible so it is difficult to believe they could just disappear.

Collinge’s Retort to Southwood’s Protege, Roy Anderson.

Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that collinge’s paper is published a mere three weeks after the extensive publicity given on august 10th to anderson’s estimate of the scale of the bse-cjd epidemic. Or perhaps collinge was sick and tired of the oxford boys’ gross underestimates of the scale of the bse and bse-cjd epidemics which were allowing the pharming industry and the labour government to avoid taking further actions to stop the spread of these diseases and so he wanted to make sure the public got a more accurate understanding of the seriousness of the threats they faced. Alternatively, perhaps the oxford boys were keen to pre-empt the publication of collinge’s results which they suspected would suggest the diseases were far more threatening than they were willing to admit.[78]

Collinge’s Animal Experiments.

Collinge performed experiments on Mice and Hamsters. Mice were given the Hamster strain of bse. The prion accumulates and grows in the Mice but they aren’t infected by this particular strain of the disease. When this disease is transferred back to Hamsters it is potent enough to infect them, “Prof collinge’s team from the medical research council’s prion unit, based at st mary’s hospital in west london .. tried to infect laboratory mice with a hamster form of the disease, called Sc237, and found that the animals showed no signs of it. But closer inspection revealed that the mice had high levels of the infective tissue in their brains. This was startling, because it had always been assumed that the hamster tissue could not cause the disease in mice, even when injected directly into their brains. The researchers also showed that the new, symptomless infection could easily be passed on when injected into healthy mice and hamsters, leading to renewed fears about bse infecting humans through other meat as well as beef.”[79] What was happening here was that the Mice were carrying and incubating two different strains of bse - one of which they are susceptible to but the other they are not. When these strains of bse were passed back to Hamsters, the Hamsters were susceptible to their own strain of bse but not to the Mice variant.

Collinge points out that the plaques associated with bse do not seem to be causing the disease, “The finding also creates a puzzle. It had been assumed that what damages the brain is the formation of insoluble ‘plaques’ of prion material converted to the rogue form. Collinge’s mice have brains full of the material, but are normal. “They have levels of prioons as high as mice dying of the disease, but no symptoms, he said. “Why?””[80]

The Implications of Collinge’s Experiments.

In the early stages of the epidemic bse-infected meat and bone meal was fed not only to Cattle but to virtually all livestock Animals. At first it was feared that all livestock Animals might develop their own prion disease. When this did not seem to be the case it was argued that livestock Animals could still act as carriers for bse so that when they were fed to other livestock Animals - whether quadraped or biped - the disease would be recycled.

The maffia and the pharming community dismissed such speculations. They developed the fantasy that if livestock Animals were not susceptible to bse they would not absorb the prions in their fodder. The bse prions would pass through their systems and end up as manure which would either be sprayed onto fields as fertiliser or would be burnt in green energy incinerators and released into the atmosphere. In both cases the prions would just disappear into the environment. This scenario was 99% wishful thinking and 1% ignorance. The maffia had no proof that bse prions in Animal feed would pass through livestock, they just made up this fantasy to protect the interests of the pharming community.

The implications of collinge’s experiments are dramatic:

* firstly, that Animals absorb, accumulate, and incubate, prions to which they are not susceptible. This gives rise to the suspicion that each species might be able to absorb a range of prions to which they are not susceptible - concentrating them in various organs. It is possible that each species absorbs different types and strains of prions.

* secondly, that although the species barrier limits Animals’ absorption of the prions to which they are susceptible it doesn’t stop them from absorbing, accumulating, and concentrating, prions to which they are not susceptible;

* thirdly, if Animals are consumed any prions they possess are passed on to the carnivores. If the carnivore is susceptible to one of these strains of prion, it could end up becoming infected. The prions do not pass through Animals’ stomachs and end up in the environment but are absorbed into the body and may eventually be fed back to other Animals. What this means is that prions are able to move from one species to another far more easily than the maffia and the oxford boys suggest when they talk about the species barrier. It also means that the quantity of bse prions in circulation amongst the country’s livestock populations must be far greater than maffia estimates.

* fourthly, that Cattle showing no symptoms of the disease may still be incubating the disease; that bse may be present in Cattle herds which have never had a case of bse; and that bse-cjd may be present in oomans showing no signs of the disease or who might not be susceptible to bse-cjd. Collinge’s work thus demolishes the maffia’s hypothesis that the disease can be passed on only when an Animal shows signs of the disease;

* finally, that people could get bse not only from Cattle, but from Pigs, Chickens, Lamb, and other oomans - although it is not known how much bse could be absorbed by various species e.g. whether Pigs absorb more bse prions than Chickens, “Mad cow disease may have infected lamb, chicken and pork, one of the world’s top authorities warned yesterday. Experts have found alarming evidence that the killer brain disease can jump the species barrier more easily than supposed, without any early symptoms emerging in the new host. The discovery raises the nightmare prospect that pigs, sheep and poultry ate the same animal feed which infected cattle, and entered the food chain while undetectably carrying the disease.”[81]

Animal Experiments: Help or Hindrance?

At the start of the bse epidemic the maffia’s critics highlighted the possibility that some, possibly all, Animals could be carriers of the disease whether infected by it or not. However, the maffia managed to keep the issue out of the public domain. Since march 1996 the maffia, nfu, and tory pharmers in parliament have worked so assiduously to insist that british beef is safe to eat they have managed to shift the goalposts of political conventionality to make this legitimate hypothesis seem nothing less than the alarmism of crackpot extremists. The only achievement of collinge’s experiments is that he resurrected a legitimate hypothesis which had been politically buried for the last five years or more. But this hypothesis did not need to be ‘proved’ by Animal experiments to make it a legitimate. Anyone with common sense would have understood that the idea of bse carriers was a real risk that necessitated concern and the adoption of appropriate policies. The only people who couldn’t appreciate the dangers it poses were fanatically pro-pharmer bigots. What collinge’s research has achieved is to remind the public of a hypothesis known about years ago which was dismissed by the maffia because it wasn’t in the interests of the pharming community.

Collinge might claim that the main originality of his experiments is the deduction that oomans not susceptible to bse-cjd might carry the disease and thus infect oomans who are susceptible, “People who ate their meat (sic) and became infected could also still be free of symptoms - but could spread the infection via surgical instruments after hospital or dental operations.”[82] But this deduction could also quite easily be drawn from the common sense idea that all Animals might be carriers, whether susceptible or not. If Animals can be carriers then so could oomans. The drawback of relying on Animal experiments to give some validity to this deduction is that it came five years after when it could have been made by a simple bit of common sense.

When it was discovered that a proportion of the ooman population is not genetically susceptible to bse, the maffia leapt to the conclusion that such oomans would be entirely free of the disease and thus could not be carriers. But they never had any proof this was the case. They never tried to explain why oomans, or Animals for that matter, did not absorb the prions in Animal feed. They just assumed the prions passed straight through Animals’ bodies. However, it is common sense to assume that bse prions could be absorbed by Animals, whether susceptible to the disease or not, and that they should be regarded as carriers until there was definitive proof to the contrary. It is far more of a fantasy to suggest that bse prions pass straight through Animals’ bodies than that they stay in the body. Similarly, it is far more of a fantasy to suggest that bse prions just disappear into the environment than that they are currently circulating in the livestock industries. Collinge’s Animal experiments don’t say anything new. All they do is resurrect common sense suspicions that should never have been allowed to be pushed out of the public debate about the disease by the bigots in the maffia.

The media lives (and, of course, dies) by the results of Animal experiments, and it took collinge’s research as devastating news for the beef industry and the rest of the Animal exploitation industry. It could indeed be described as ‘devastating’ but it is not ‘news’ since the threat has been known about for years. The media should have accepted years ago the precautionary, common sense, hypothesis that all meat eaters are more likely than not to be carriers of bse, instead of waiting five years for the results of Animal experiments. For the media to believe, without any scientific proof, that Animals and oomans were not carriers of bse, shows the media’s bias towards the pharming community.

Since the start of the bse epidemic, the pharming industry has used Animal experiments to dismiss public anxieties about the threat posed by bse and to delay the implementation of anti-bse policies which damage their interests. The Animal exploitation industry always vigorously, and hysterically, dismisses hypotheses which run counter to its interests. When the public demands that action should be taken to curb bse, the pharming industry dismisses their demands saying there is no scientific evidence for the policy and the issue is not serious enough to warrant the expense of Animal experiments to obtain the necessary evidence. When public pressure for action becomes too intense the pharming industry then insists that Animal experiments should be carried out because it knows this delays any action being taken. When the experiments have been completed the Animal exploitation industry then complains about any results which run counter to its interests. Politically, Animal experiments are just like royal commissions - they are used solely as a means of delaying action which will curb the interests of a powerful sector of society. The irony of collinge’s Animal experiments is that the pharming industry denounces his experiments even though, a few years earlier, it insisted they had to be carried out before any action could be taken against bse.

There are many flaws in the pharming industry’s political tactic of using Animal experiments to avoid policies damaging to their interests. By not biting the bullet they just keep prolonging their agony (and spreading the disease). They try to prevent consumers from learning the big truth about bse but all they succeed in doing is having to face years of adverse publicity as the truth leaks out bit by bit. They try to prevent consumers from being scared but eventually the truth is discovered and they end up scaring people even more. If pharmers had acted swiftly and ruthlessly years ago to eradicate this diease, they might have long since recovered from the crisis. Instead, the bse crisis has now persisted for 15 years and still shows no sign of going away. In fact the best is yet to come.

Collinge’s Demands

Collinge uses the publicity obtained for his work to repeat his long standing demands: firstly, that measures need to be taken to reduce the chances of people catching bse or bse-cjd from reuseable medical and dental instruments, and, secondly, that the pharmer-loving labour government should test Cattle that have been slaughtered in abattoirs, “The researchers said there was an argument for screening apparently healthy cattle after slaughter to investigate whether significant levels of symptomless or ‘subclinical’ disease are present.”[83] It has already been noted above that seac went public with its demand that dentists and surgeons should take precautions against the transmission of bse so so it seems seac’s scientists believe the government is not doing all that it can to stop the spread of the disease by this means. Quite why seac scientists and collinge don’t just come out and say that such measures are vital because bse is more lethal and contagious than aids is not known - perhaps the balance of power is such that they know the thugs in the pharming industry would kick up such a fuss they’d face the sack for telling the truth.

The government is currently carrying out some tests to see if bse is still present in Cattle but it will never test the Cattle slaughtered in abattoirs because it knows the discovery that such Animals have bse would spell the end of the Cattle industry in this country. The labour government has become such a traitorous bunch of shits who, just like the tories before them, would rather have a thriving Cattle industry and no oomans, than a country full of vegans and no Cattle industry. When the nazis carrying out the second holocaust were surrounded during the last months of the war they fought on despite the allies wreaking destruction all around them. The labour government and Animal exploitation industry are eco-nazis buried so deeply in their bse bunkers that nothing is going to drag them out to see the devastation around them.

Daily Mail: “Is there an Invisible Cjd?”

The quote for this section in the bse dairy is the flamboyant, and meaningless, front page headline carried by the daily mail. No, of course there is no such thing as an invisible cjd prion. What it means is that oomans may be carrying the disease, without being infected by it, and can pass it on and infect other oomans.

The daily mail article mentions that frances hall, whose son died of bse-cjd in 1996, has heard a rumour floating around the Animal exploitation industry that the government is trying to repeal bse regulations, “She said she was worried by suggestions that the government might be considering relaxing rigid abattoir controls now that the bse scare was fading.”[84]

There is also news that the bse report will be delayed, “To the dismay of victims’ relatives, bse inquiry report is delayed six months.”[85] The reason for this may be that the pharming-loving labour government has realized that once the report vindicates payments of compensation to bse-cjd victims then it will be faced with the prospect of an astronomical bill. It is already refusing to give the miners the compensation to which they are legally entitled so the last thing they want to do is give compensation to the families of bse-cjd victims because, it would much rather give compensation to pharmers.

Guardian.

The guardian’s approach to this issue is no less dramatic than that created by the daily mail. It has a dramatic front page article, ‘Scientists find new Bse Links’ “Scientists are to re-examine controls against variant cjd in the wake of evidence that both diseases may be highly infectious even when their unwitting carriers do not display outward signs of suffering from the condition.”[86]

Mirror - Another Victim fights for his Life - Uhhhh???

The mirror carries a miniscule nine paragraph article about the latest bse scare - which is quite surprising given its recent extensive coverage. The article finishes with the news that, “A man was yesterday fighting for his life in telford, shropshire, after contracting new variant cjd.”[87] The mirror tries to put a heroic spin on this man’s condition by suggesting he is fighting the disease - implying he might even survive the combat. But this is grossly misleading. Victims of the disease cannot fight the disease. They have no way of knowing how to fight the disease - it isn’t like struggling out of a coma. Victims are utterly helpless. They just have to suffer delusions and the loss of their abilities to walk, eat, and defecate, whilst the prions eat away their brains.

Bbc.

The bbc’s breakfast and dinner time news (i.e. the midday news for middle class readers) leads with collinge’s ‘evidence’. The bbc chooses once again to interview ken gill from the nfu who states, yet again, that brutish beef is the safest in the world - it seems as though this total buerk still hasn’t realized there is no such scientific evidence to back up his nonsense. Gill has developed an extensive range of bse denials and various recording companies are believed to want him to create a compilation cd of his greatest and most popular denials to raise funds for the growing number of beef loving victims being buried around the country. The bbc’s 6pm news drops its bse article from first to third place.

Itv.

Itv’s 6.30pm news leads with the bse issue. The line taken is not to explain the science but to highlight the fact that consumers are in a state of confusion about the latest scientific research. Surely itv news has a responsibility to explain the scientific issues first and then ask people’s opinions rather than highlighting the fact that people are confused about something which they have not been told about.

The mundi club would like to ask its readers a question - if you were doing a news broadcast about a scientific discovery where would you begin the article? In the lab where the research was carried out? At a scientific institute? For some utterly bizarre reason, itv’s opening film sequence in its bse article is shot in a butcher’s shop and shows a butcher hacking up an Animal carcass. The eco-nazis reporter asks the butcher for his opinion about the latest research. Even though he knows nothing about it, his opinion is none too surprising! The reporter then asks a couple of consumers in the butcher’s shop for their opinion even they too have no idea what the latest research is about either! Their response, of course, is to say there are so many scare stories these days that none of them are worth listening to so they just get on with doing whatever it is that they’ve been doing for the last four decades. What else would you expect a couple of people to say in a butchers shop? So much for balanced, impartial news. Thank god they didn’t go around to the offices of the ecologist magazine where the editors might have been eating their tribally blessed beef stew!! We can’t wait for the days when television news companies send reporters around to the local Animal liberation front for their opinion. For some reason the media believes it is morally wrong to interview the people who know the most about the Animal exploitation industry and are most likely to give them an honest answer. The last thing the media want people to hear is the truth when they’ve got such a heavy burden maintaining the maffia’s gross stupidity.

Itv’s intention seems to be to highlight that consumers have a right to be confused when they can’t be bothered to find out about the conditions under which their food is being produced and that this confusion is a good reason for them continuing to ingest a disease which could possibly wipe out half a million people over the next couple of decades. Confusion is the best legitimization of ignorance.

Channel 4

Channel 4’s 7pm news begins by listing the main topics to be featured in its broadcast. Bse is to be discussed second and the accompanying film clip is a Cattle carcass being sliced up with a huge carving knife. So, no prizes for guessing which side these meat-eating bigots are on when it comes to assessing this issue. Over the last couple of years there has been an increasing trend for news broadcasters to discuss scientific research in butchers’ shops or abattoirs with plentiful shots of Animals being cut up into tiny pieces. It seems like a deliberate policy to get people used to the idea that treating Animals like meat is morally acceptable. The nazis mastered the art of turning an extraordinary act of monstrousness into a normal part of life’s routines but they never came anywhere near to interviewing concentration camp guards for their opinions on whether the jews were behaving themselves before being shoved in the ovens.

John snow begins the bse article by stating, “It’s a nightmare scenario” - that other Animals including oomans might be carriers of bse - although it is more than possible he might have been referring to the pharming industry’s subsidy mountain. Julian rush then presents his part of the bse report and starts by saying, “The biggest threat today may come from other humans.” He points out that even if other Animals are now carrying the disease the current regulations (which the government are trying to unravel) ensure that any bse infected organs won’t get into the food chain. But he then points out that these regulations don’t apply to Pigs or Chickens. This is followed by further shots of jews being chopped up with various knives. Rush finishes off his article with the same two interviews shown on itv - the consumers in a butcher’s shop using confusion to legitimize their shopping habits. ‘Shopping ‘til they drop’ takes on a new meaning here.

At this point, snow takes over the bse article with a studio discussion between peter smith, the acting chairman of seac, and dr michael clarke, tory mp (it’s not known whether he actually worked for his doctorate or whether it’s a fake). Clarke’s arguments takes us back to the glory days of tory belligerence when tory mps frothed and foamed at the idea that there was any possibility of oomans getting a disease from Cattle. (Who could have thought that such sophisticated and cultured beings could give a deadly disease to billions of rampaging, vile bipeds). He’s asked for his opinion about the latest scientific study, “I don’t see any reason for this scare.” Once again, in case viewers were a little confused, “I think this is a scare.” And, clearly thinking that viewers might still be confused about the message he was trying to convey, “We don’t want scientists coming on tv and scaring people about the food they eat.” These were his considered scientific views on the new study. As brutish an mp as you’ll ever be likely to hear. Smith tries to be as diplomatic as possible under this tirade of sound-bite stupidity but ends up by saying the current controls are fine, that everything else is fine, so let’s just wait and see until people start dropping in the street before doing anything more.

What’s interesting about all of these tv news presentations has been the complete absence of any government spokesperson to give the government’s line. Having ceded control over the bse issue to the pharming community, it is almost as if can’t even be bothered to try and cover up the pretense that it is still in control.

August 25-31st 2000: Corporate Comic helps to Advertise Bse Infected Beef.

The government and the pharming industry respond quickly to the bad publicity for the Animal exploitation industry by broadcasting a series of adverts on television extolling the virtues of eating jews. These adverts star a well known corporate comic. Wasn’t it just a few years ago that he was appearing on channel as a struggling, impoverished comic? It’s hard to believe how quickly people degenerate under the influence of corporate bse.

August 30th 2000: Tories in the Labour Government telling the 70 Bse-cjd Victims that everything’s alright.

The government makes a single statement about collinge’s conclusions, “Ministers yesterday played down the threat of a new bse peril. They told britons not to worry about warnings that the disease may jump easily without visible symptoms. An agriculture ministry spokesman said safeguards were in place to counter “subclinical” forms of the disease. And food safety expert hugh pennington called the latest findings “interesting, important, but not worrying.””[88] The only safeguards the government erects are those around pharmers’ subsidies.