Market Farming

[Sojourner <sojournr AT missouri.org>]

Marc & Marcy wrote:
> 
> ..snip..
> 
> > I'm still hesitant to use these products, but your information has
> > put me more at ease. I guess when we don't know enough, it's easier to be
> > overanxious.

> While some claim that prions are not to be feared

No one claims that TSEs are not devastating or that the prions that
cause them are harmless.  Only that your chances of ever coming across
the BSE prion, and then actually contracting nvCJD, are extremely small,
especially outside the UK.

> I think
> this conclusion is best reached by qualified disease control
> people as the disease is devastating, not uncommon and far
> and beyond more prevalent than "meteorites". See:
> 
> http://www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/335/Prions.html

I checked the current number of vCJD cases.  The grand total now stands
at 48, 46 of which are in Great Britain and exactly 2 of which are in
France.

I don't know what the population in Britain is, but 46 cases of vCJD in
15 years from the entire population of at least several millions is very
rare, and that in a country where the population had a much higher risk
of exposure to infected meat than anywhere else in the world.

Granted, in Britain it is probably more common than being struck by a
meteorite, but less common than being struck by lightning.  <VBG>

The incidence in the USA of nvCJD is exactly zero, and you can't get
much rarer than that.

> > I hadn't heard about being genetically susceptible either.
> Genetic susceptibility exists but the same disease shows up
> in people who have NO family history.

Same site, from http://www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/335/BSE/SH.html (btw, keep
in mind this site is in the UK and most statistics quoted in it apply to
the UK and not to the US.  The following statistic is not specific to
just the UK, however, except where mention is specifically made of vCJD)

"Other risk factors include the PrP 129 polymorphism. For the Caucasian
population: 

     12%V/V 
     37% M/M 
     51%M/V 

The relative Sporadic CJD Risk for these genotypes is 11 : 4 : 1.
For growth hormone iatrogenic CJD it is 50% V/V, 31%M/M and 19% M/V.So
far 100% of NV-CJD patients have had a M/M genotype."

In 15 years, not one single case of vCJD (the TSE in humans now linked
to BSE in cattle) has been found in any human being that does not carry
this genetic marker.  Not one.

"Growth hormone iatrogenic CJD" refers to people whose CJD is traceable
to having received one or more injections of contaminated human growth
hormone; this infection vector is a much easier route for CJD to take
than it is for the BSE to vCJD pathway, which must first jump the
species barrier (cattle to human, however it may have first infected the
cattle).

'Nuff said, I'll leave it now.

-- 
Holly ;-D
Contrary Peasant
sojournr AT missouri.org