Resent as it got lost in cyberspace

Dana

I tell people the liver is the "juicer" rather than the filter.
Physiologically it certainly has both roles and "juicer" sounds nicer and
helps explain its huge content of mineral vitamins and other micronutrients.
The toxin aspect makes it particularly important to look at the farming
method and pasture fed will be much superior (esp. if organic). Grain fed
meat requires more antibiotics and other chemicals and also is more prone to
liver abscesses etc, and it has an inferior profile of vitamins minerals and
other nutrients (see e.g. www.eatwild.com )

As for the brain and mad cow disease, well now you've got me started. One of
the first proven prion brain diseases was kuru in the New Guinea highlands.
This was proven to be due to the ritual eating of the brains of deceased
relatives. Cessation of this practice has stamped out kuru. Thus it is
entirely predictable that when agricultural economists decided to feed cows
the brains of their own deceased relatives, that they had created an
opportunity for a prion disease to enter the cycle, and be concentrated
upwards, exponentially affecting more cows. In due course this has happened.
Nature has many potential life cycles that various pests can enter, and it
is clearly important to examine in great detail the consequences of any
changes to the natural feeding and breeding cycles, from the point of view
of ensuring that one does not create an opportunity for a pathogen.

The silver lining of the mad cow cloud would have to be the short life span
of the mad cow disease. Fortunately is was rapid enough to show up in the
short life span of a cow (albeit they have a small brain).

On the speculative side, one can only imagine the cataclysmic effect had the
prion had a longer life cycle- that of kuru is over 20 years- in which case
the cows would never have gotten sick prior top slaughter. If that were the
case, then humans could have been infected without ever realising the
source. It remains to be seen if there is only one cow prion- if a longer
cycle prion had already entered the cycle, it might still be incubating.

Fortunately it appears that most Australian beef comes from
non-cannibalistic sources :-).

Ben Balzer

Dr Ben Balzer [log in to unmask]
109 Morgan St
Beverly Hills 2209 NSW Australia
Tel (02) 9502 3355 Fax (02) 9502 4243 Int'l prefix (+612)