Putting People First

Left Field

by Patricia Nell Warren

For years, the United States reassured the world that there was

no mad cow disease in our cattle. Suddenly, in early 2004, came the shattering news—our “first” case of mad cow. Several countries immediately embargoed shipments of U.S. beef. Many in our government and corporate food industry went into panic, trying to protect corporate profits and national image.

The various types of brain disease—called TSE, or transmissible spongiform encephalopathy—include the human forms, CJD and kuru, and the form that is now rampant among deer and elk, as well as mad cow itself. Spongiforms are so-called because the affected brain has a sponge-like look. They are all 100 percent fatal, and there is still no cure or treatment. I think there will be many more cases of mad cow in the U.S. Why? Because a habit of skewing priorities is crippling our public-health sector. Some officials and government agencies, and also some civilian lobbies, seem incapable of putting people ahead of politics and money. They refuse to recognize a life-threatening emergency for what it is.

The U.S. has had lots of time to take effective action on mad cow—to put the American people first. For three centuries now, a type of TSE called scrapie was known to infect sheep and goats. Experts disagree on whether the infectious agent is a protein, a virus, or a spiroplasma. But the agent’s apparent ability to leap across species lines has been proven by research on lab animals in several studies, including one in the 1970s by a Nobel-winning American researcher. In the late 1980s, TSE started appearing in British and European cattle and humans, possibly as a result of the livestock industry’s cost-saving practice of feeding “recycled” animal protein back to farm animals. Protein from infected sheep was fed to cattle. Infected cattle, in turn, may have infected humans, resulting in CJD. More recent research shows that the agent can also spread through medical procedures as well as contact with infected tissues.

What happened in Britain and Europe, with thousands of human CJD deaths identified to date and millions of cattle slaughtered as a preventative, set off a global panic, because of the international trade in meat, livestock, and animal feed. Some governments did the right thing and imposed drastic restrictions on feeding, imports, and meat-handling. Our USDA evidently had its arm twisted by the food lobby, because it took a more wishy-washy approach. Washington insisted that the U.S. had no mad cow, though sheep scrapie has occurred here and our livestock-feeding industry has done the same protein recycling that brought catastrophe in Britain and Europe. The USDA did impose some restrictions on feeding animal protein to other animals. But major loopholes were left, creating openings for infected material to move between species—not only to humans and cattle, but also to pigs and poultry. Worse, some feed manufacturers flouted the restrictions. These loopholes and violations have been fairly common knowledge for several years, but the government did nothing.

Even as our government insisted that the U.S. was clean on mad cow, a similar brain-wasting disease was spreading out

of control among U.S. deer and elk. These game animals are often farmed for their meat and antlers, and they get fed the same commercial livestock feed that can infect cattle.

We may eventually learn that mad cow has been quietly spreading in the U.S. for many years but wasn’t publicly identified because of that inability to put people’s safety ahead of corporate profits and national image. After all these decades of advance warning, there is still no rapid test for TSE in a live animal! Indeed, there is no test to identify CJD in humans either, other than the drastic method of a brain biopsy. The CDC seems so unconcerned about the human form that it doesn’t post annual CJD mortality figures on its Web site. Yet according to the Department of Health, 750 Americans have died of CJD since 1990—almost as many as the 927 that died in the UK during that period.

Why am I talking about BSE in a magazine devoted to AIDS issues? Because we can see the same habits of mind, the same skewed priorities driving the AIDS industry. More and more, big AIDS lobbies and AIDS bureaucracies are putting the almighty dollar and the importance of image ahead of human welfare. More and more, what we’re getting is vaccines and prevention programs that don’t work, soaring drug prices, and massive cutbacks in services to Americans with AIDS—even as discounted drugs and millions in U.S. AIDS aid are flowing to other countries.

As always, I have to wonder how long “the people” will put up with being valued so little.

Patricia Nell Warren, author of fiction bestsellers like The Front Runner, also writes provocative commentary. Her writings are archived at www.patricianellwarren.com. Reach her by e-mail at patriciawarren@aol.com.

February 2004