On Sat, 10 Aug 2002 07:03:57 +0900, Tom <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


>> Would you risk to get *this* awful disease, even if  the probability is
>>very very low?

>Sure, why not? I risk getting something no matter WHAT I
>eat.

It's a deadly incurable disease with long suffering time.
The risk of getting AIDS is very low in many infection ways too.
E.g. for dentists treating random patients without protection.
But there *is* a definite probability to get it, unprotected.
Would you bother to avoid it if easily possible?

>Mad cow risk is so low it is hardly even measurable.
>115 cases out of 60,000,000 Britons? In 15 years? That is a
>level of risk that is just laughable.

The point is that the 115 cases may be just the tip of the iceberg.
Incubation time is long, so long that the disease could spread unrecognised
until it had a breakout in 180,000 cows. This despite protective laws were
effective since a couple of years.
Actually the number of infected cows should be much higher than the animals
with already had an outbreak of the disease.

People fear that there are much more infected humans which could display a
much bigger outbreak after some years. Nobody knows, but some speculate of
many thousands of cases.

Do you know russian roulette, the "game" with a revolver and one of six
chambers loaded? A horror play.
What if the revolver had 1000 empty and 1 loaded chamber?

Cheers,

Amadeus
P.S. of course I see the deleterious effects of the farmed animal fat as
much more dangerous than BSE. Order of magnitudes more dangerous.
40% of all westerners die of heart/vessel diseases. not only 2 ppm British.
My uncle had a heart attack recently. He had a diet low in EFAs.