My sister just told me there have never been any illness or deaths

[Grey]

from Mad Cow and the whole 'Scare' is just a ploy to sell newspapers,That is; no animal or human deaths. Anyone with any information or 'Proof'
I'd appreciate it. Oh, and she said that there isn't any link to human illness, that is just to 'scare ignorant people'. She 'Knows'
no one has ever gotten sick from eating beef.

[havocmom]

1. Just get her another burger

and a drool cup

[LeftyMom]

2. Human death linkie (UK stats only in this one)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3524329.stm

[flvegan]

11. Stop. Idiots are afoot.

Please don't post anything that has a fact-based study or otherwise tangible base.

[Swede]

15. There sure are.

There have been 139 deaths since vCJD emerged in the UK nine years ago. None has been reported so far this year.

[LeftyMom]

17. Your number's wrong.

http://www.cjd.ed.ac.uk/figures.htm

Yeah, it's pretty damn uncommon, but what's an acceptable risk of death by horribly painful and inevitably fatal brain wasting disease?

[Swede]

18. I'll take those odds,and enjoy beef.

Do you know how many people die horribly because they smoke? Millions.

[flvegan]

20. Both selfish acts.

Got anything else?

[LeftyMom]

21. Well yeah, but smokers are fucking morans.

I think it's kinda funny you're comparing eating cow to smoking. Way to make my point for me.

Anyhow, the significant risks from meat consumption aren't prion diseases, which are horrible but pretty darn rare. The real risks are the huge increases in cancer, heart disease and diabetes (iirc, the #1, 2 and 5 causes of death in the US) that come from a diet high in animal tissues.

[LeftyMom]

16. Hi, is this your first time on the internet?

:rofl:

Ignore the poo flinging monkeys, and walk by out of range.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

3. Denny Crane.

[LeftyMom]

4. Info on BSE in cattle and other animals

http://www.avma.org/communications/brochures/bse/bse_brochure.asp

[SPKrazy]

5. she works for the beef industry right?

or is she just a fucking moran?

:shrug:

[pitohui]

6. there have been very, very few, less than 200 human deaths world wide

so, yes, it is basically just to scare ignorant people and keep them stirred up about nothing

the percentage of the population that has ever contracted mad cow disease from eating beef is so vanishingly small that if you are dx'd with mad cow, it's definitely your day to buy powerball tickets

actually you have a better chance of winning the powerball

my guess at this time of century that it isn't enough to eat infected beef, you must also have a rare genetic predisposition to get the disease

in the 80s, we were told that millions of people would be dead in the u.k. within 20 years because of the numbers who ate the infected beef, remember, brits used to be called "beefeaters" -- well, 20 years have passed, it just didn't happen

[Swede]

8. More people probably die going to the store to buy the beef,

than have ever died from mad cow.

[alarimer]

9. You have a much better chance of contracting E.Coli or something instead

And even that risk is relatively small but higher than it needs to be. If we had better inspection of beef it would be quite small but still higher than mad cow disease.

[flvegan]

10. Christ, what bullshit

as per the usual.

You wouldn't know a misdiagnosis from a hammer to the forehead.

You DO of course know how long it takes to die from this, right? 20 years...not enough.

Thanks for playing wanna-be-doc.

[pitohui]

13. it is obviously way less than 20 years, a large proportion of the dead were teenagers

two of the first cases excited such horror in britain because the boys were still teen-agers in the late 1980s when they died

clearly if a cow is infected in the mid 80s and a kid dies in 1986, it didn't take him 20 years to get the disease and die

you read one article on mad cow back in 1988 and still have the same bad information, but the trouble is that some people actually pay attention and learn over time

if you are afraid of mad cow, you have to be both a very poor mathematician and you have to be unnaturally fearful and susceptible to media hoopla

[flvegan]

19. Enjoy your beef.

It's a favor to us all.

[TZ]

23. Actually its NOT genetically linked

There is an awful lot about prions (which cause Mad Cow and Creutsfeld-Jacobs disease) that we don't understand. They behave a little like viri but are NOT viri. They are proteins that don't have the viral capsid. There is an AWFUL lot of research in this area because biologists don't understand it that well. Oh and because Creutsfeld-Jacobs disease has about a 20-30 incubation span we really don't know how prevalent it is yet. However there are DIRECT links to natives of Papua/New Guinea getting this disease on a fairly frequent basis because they ate the brains of their dead as a ritual.

To the OP, is NIH just a propaganda scare machine..THey take it VERY seriously:
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/tse/tse.htm

[Swede]

7. It is miniscule when compared to say lightning deaths.

They were worried at first,but now,not so much. Dozens per year.

[TZ]

24. Biolgists worry enough about it

That they recently developed (and I know the scientist who did the work) a test for prions in their cell/tissue cultures. Its a very popular assay.

[qb]

12. I think she got her links crossed.

I've heard that said about smoking marijuana, but never mad cow disease. :shrug:

[Oeditpus Rex]

14. You may tell your sister she is correct

I was, in fact, at the secret meeting in Heidelberg in 1932 when Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Charles A. Dana and Charles Foster Kane planned the now-infamous Mad Cow Scare to increase circulation of their newspapers.

I distinctly remember Kane dictating a cablegram to one of his reporters: "You provide the cows, I'll provide the madness."

[crim son]

25. ...

:spray:

[triguy46]

22. Mad cow is just one variant of spongiform encephalopathy...

I would urge her to eat a lot of cow brains, squirrel brains, (the kentucky link to JKD), or maybe the brains of a deceased loved one (as in the south pacific link to JKD) and report back to us.

So, if I understand this, the international newspaper cartel creates disasters to get rich 50 cents at a time, right? This would assume that the number of additional newspapers purchased as a result of the scare is significant. since most papers are sold by subscription, there is no additional income from subscribers. Just the persons who read of "mad cow" and rush out to the newstand. Hmmmm.

[mainegreen]

26. Change tack. Try to demonstrate how *all* industrial meat animal production produces dangerous meat.

Plus the meat tastes far, far, far, far worse than meat that is raised in a smaller, more natural manner.

Just the flavor reason alone is enough to switch. The difference is that dramatic.