Human ‘Mad Cow’ Could Cause Eventual Epidemic
Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of “mad cow disease,” has an incubation period of half a century, and could cause an eventual epidemic, British researchers report.
In findings published in The Lancet, they looked at a similar disease — linked to cannibalism — to better understand the impact such an epidemic might have.
Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is caused by misfolded brain proteins called prions, which cows contract through contaminated feed. Humans can catch the human form of the disease, vCJD, by eating contaminated beef. So far, the fatal degenerative illness has infected about 160 people in the United Kingdom. More cases have been confirmed in six other countries, including the United States.
Now, researchers at University College London have determined, through the study of a similar disease, that BSE has an incubation period of more than 50 years before it actively becomes vCJD.
Patients in Papua New Guinea with a disease called kuru — the only currently epidemic human prion disease — were studied to determine how long the disease was dormant before symptoms appeared.
Kuru occurs in Papua New Guinea society because the disease was transmitted through cannibalism — a common cultural practice up until 1960. By comparing the birth year in relation to the cessation of cannibalism in the community, the researchers were able to assess incubation periods of the disease.
Eleven participants in the kuru study had minimum incubation periods of between 34 and 41 years, the researchers calculated. They could more accurately calculate the date of infection for men, and estimated an incubation period of between 39 and 56 years.
- Lancet
Dr. Keith and Laurie Nemec’s comments on human mad cow can cause eventual epidemic.
In this study it showed that the mad cow disease which is transmitted into humans by eating infected beef with prions. These are proteins that come from infected brain tissue. This disease leads to what’s called the human form of mad cow disease which is a fatal brain wasting disease. The researchers show that the incubation period can be up to fifty years which means we have not seen the beginning of it yet. They found this because the closest form of the disease that they could track was something called Kuru. Which was isolated in New Guinea society, Papua, New Guinea society that regularly participated in cannibalism, until up to the approximately 1960, then they found how long it took to incubate the disease and the average was between 34 and 56 years, somewhere in that range. The message for you to learn from this is, first of all, avoid the transmission. Over a million Europeans became vegetarian when the mad cow situation arose and wisely so, because this is not transmitted through plant products, only through infected beef. And the infected beef was infected because they were feeding cattle ground up infected brain tissue and other animal parts of other prior slaughtered cattle. They were basically inducing cannibalism in the cattle to save on the cost of feeding the animals. So, it is very simply to resolve this situation, stop eating animal products. When you stop eating animal products and adopt a living/raw plant based diet, the risk of this is gone and also the gain of health and the highest level is greatly increased.