Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 14:53:00 +0000
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: M-TH: How now mad cow?


In message <3.0.3.32.19980221085118.0075e644-AT-pop.columbia.edu>, Louis
Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu> writes
>James Heartfield:
>>There is not one single proven case of transmission of Bovine Spongiform
>>Ecphalopathy to humans.
>
>Actually there is no strict proof of what causes cancer. This has been one
>of the main stumbling-blocks in the fight against corporate criminals, as
>the recent battle with the tobacco industry indicated.

My error, clearly there is one case of a spongey encephalopathy that is
of a distinctly bovine character, the rare case of one Louis Proyect,
who entertains the delusional belief that he is a computer engineer at
Columbia University, New York. Proyect's brain went spongy through
ingestion of too many environmentalist newsletters, spirit dancing and
watching Oprah Winfrey re-runs on afternoon television.

Even the current panic-mongers banning beef on the bone accept that the
chances of contracting BSE are about ten million to one, or less than
you have of being struck down by lightning.

As to the demonstrably cancerous tobacco, it clearly is a health risk,
but I am still opposed to prohibition, aren't you?
-------------

More Mad Cow Madness

Dr Michael Fitzpatrick on the latest in the mad mad cow saga. 

Further government regulations concerning the safety of British beef
have provoked the latest upsurge in public fears about the dangers of
'new variant' Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (nvCJD), now widely recognised
as the 'human form of mad cow disease' (Bovine Spongiform
Encephalopathy). 

It would be difficulty to imagine a disease more appropriate to British
society in the 'nervous nineties' than nvCJD. It is characterised by a
devastating loss of physical control and mental capacities, and
progresses rapidly through dementia and total dependency to death.
Though the nature of the disease remains mysterious and the scale of
risk is incalculable, it appears to be linked to one of our most basic
activities - eating - and to one of our most traditional foods - beef.
Add in suspicions of official corruption and cover-up, a few intrepid
scientific whistle-blowers and some bold investigative journalists and
the BSE/nvCJD story is set to run and run. 

Though much evidence now supports the view that nvCJD is linked to BSE,
much more remains obscure (the cause of the disease, its source and mode
of transmission all remain matters of intense scientific dispute). While
most authorities accept the thesis, for which Stanley Prusiner is about
to receive the Nobel Prize, that CJD, BSE and a number of similar
diseases are transmitted by 'prions', others believe they may be caused
by some sort of viral agent (others still believe they are auto-immune
diseases or the result of exposure to toxic organophosphates). 

While the government regulates beef, some believe that the source could
just as easily be pigs or poultry - or even vegetables nourished by
contaminated bone meal fertiliser. Some experts question whether another
mode of exposure, which does not involve the food chain - such as
'peripheral inoculation' - might explain the currently baffling pattern
of cases. It is worth noting that, though each case now receives
unprecedented publicity, there has been no sign of an upward trend of
cases, which stand at a total of 22 (3 in 1995, 10 in 1996 and 9 this
year). 

Ever since the government's March 1996 announcement that the 'most
likely' explanation of the first ten recognised cases of nvCJD was beef
contaminated with BSE, it has become locked into a process of
interaction with the scientists on the one hand and the public on the
other. This process, amplified through the media, has exacerbated
popular anxieties - to the detriment, not only of the farmers and the
meat industry, but of society as a whole. 

At a time when wider social, economic and political forces have
generated a climate of unprecedented insecurity, health scares have had
an increasing impact on society (see Frank Furedi, Culture of Fear: risk
taking and the morality of low expectation, Cassell, 1997). An
intensified sense of individuation has contributed to a growing distrust
of traditional sources of authority - including medical and scientific
experts, politicians and civil servants. In the evolution of the mad cow
scare, this distrust was reinforced by the wider unpopularity of the
Tory government, the cumulative effect of earlier health scares,
outbreaks of food poisoning and the appearance of growing divisions of
opinion among scientists themselves. 

The remarkable feature of the fateful statements of 22 March 1996 by
health minister Stephen Dorrell and agriculture minister Douglas Hogg -
which precipitated the public panic, the ban on beef exports and
catastrophe for farmers and butchers - was that they had no public
health value whatsoever. If people had been exposed to BSE, this must
have been before the 1989 ban on the inclusion of beef offal in animal
foodstuffs and there was nothing further that anybody could do to avoid
BSE. The additional regulations announced then - like those announced
this week - were more a token display of rigour than of real practical
importance. The government was not providing any useful information, but
simply issuing an invitation to panic. 

Scientific research now takes place under the glare of publicity.
Preliminary and provisional results are now transmitted directly from
specialist journals into the mainstream media (indeed they sometimes
appear first in the popular press). Established processes of peer-
review, criticism and discussion are short-circuited in the rush to
publish, with potentially dangerous long-term consequences. 

Hitherto unknown scientists have become celebrities. In their
increasingly frequent media appearances, the scientists too seem to have
become influenced by the febrile climate of public opinion. Thus, in
their projections of the likely scale of the nvCJD epidemic, different
members of the government committee - the Spongiform Encephalopathy
Advisory Committee (Seac) - oscillate from sober estimates ('around 200'
, Professor John Pattison, 8 June 1997, Sunday Telegraph) to
prognostications of doom ('a plague of biblical proportions', Professor
John Collinge, 3 October, New Statesman). The unpredictability of the
epidemic gives these experts a free hand to choose projections on any
particular day, to suit either their own personal inclinations or those
of their audience. 

New Labour government ministers, chastened by the experiences of their
predecessors, are acutely sensitive to allegations of concealing
scientific researches. In an administration distinguished by its
attention to the art of news management, they are also alert to the
danger that information they attempt to suppress will be leaked to the
press, producing even greater public impact. Thus they rush to respond
to the latest research, displaying their commitment to openness and
transparency as well as to public health. The result is a series of
statements in the spirit of 22 March, with no public health value, and
actions, such as the great beef cull, of purely symbolic significance.
In this way the irrationality of the culture of fear is intensified and
the climate of anxiety about nvCJD reinforced. 

Though the scientists are plagued by doubt, in the court of public
opinion the humble hamburger has been tried and convicted. When a case
was reported of a 24-year-old woman dying from nvCJD who had been a
vegetarian for 11 years, the immediate response was to raise the spectre
of an even longer period of incubation of the putative infectious agent,
and to point the finger at the possibility of contaminated baby food
(New Statesman, 29 August). Why baby food? There seems no better reason
than to observe the law that all health scares ultimately lead back to
the threat to babies and children, the most vulnerable members of a
society that is now obsessed with the vulnerability of individuals to
malign and indeterminate threats. 

-- 
James Heartfield


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