[muglo] Re: 100% OT (was 90% OT (was: Re: What's withMacOutpost?)

I do feel compelled to respond to your part on BSE b/c, as a biologist I'm 
surprised at your lack of understanding of the BSE catastrophy. This e-mail 
is not meant as a rebuttal to your ideas but as a clarification of facts, 
with as little editorial comment as possible.

> >>> Mad cow disease, BSE, is yet *another* example of a failure of the
> >> PRIVATE
> >>> industry.
> >>
> >> OK, here we go.  Tell me how that was?  Your ideologies are coming 
>through
> >> full tilt now.
> >
> > Merely pointing out that your beloved "private can ALWAYS do it better
> > mantra" is *NOT* true.
>
>It's a weak example, because of the hidden cause of BSE.  It showed up in
>Alberta, almost in the middle of Canada.  That was anybody's issue.  The
>science won over everybody's need to keep it out, then it made it all the
>way into Alberta.  Too strange or unknown to really address whose issue 
>that
>belongs to.

I wasn't even referring to mad cow in Canada (it's not even on my radar 
screen as an environmental/health issue (it's an economic one)). Though, now 
that you mention it, I guess it is perhaps an issue of private failure since 
the industry resisted the strict regs which would've placated the US and 
Japan immediately and, most likely prevented the occurrence of the disease 
in the first place. They resisted (as does nearly every industry to 
oversight and regs in the absence of *immediate* economic threat... the 
precautionary principle is absent from the lexicon of industry and gov't 
when it is controlled by industry to too great an extent (Ontario PC party 
anyone... gets TWICE the money that the two opposition parties get COMBINED 
though they are supported by 65% of the populace... all b/c of corporate 
donations) b/c it would've cost them more.

Now any additional costs incurred b/c of stricter regs would've completely 
made up for the impending collapse of the Canadian cattle industry b/c of 
*one* cow (think what this has done to Canada's beef farmers' international 
repuation) -- the problem with prevention is that success *cannot* be seen 
and it is rarely possible to measure. Had we had the regs in place and 
enforced (unfortunately not everyone is ethical, especially when the bottom 
line is concerned), BSE wouldn't have cropped up in our system in the first 
place, *but* cattle farmers would've bitched and moaned about the inordinate 
restrictions that were raising their costs.

Anyway, the above paragraph was an aside written after I wrote what was 
below and re-read your initial comment and is a little too  much of a 
political paragraph for my tastes. Well, here's the science & policy behind 
UK's fiasco in a Cole's Notes version (somewhere I have a very detailed 
paper on the history of the UK BSE "epidemic" if you're interested).

There are two possibilities (for the Canadian mad cow), one of which was 
*never* floated in public (very surprising to me given that it would have 
deflected a lot of criticism even though # 2 was more likely given that 
cattle were still being fed high-risk animal protein in some cases):

As a pre-PS -- the Japanese are entirely justified (in the world of 
tit-for-tat in which we (as Canadians) particiapte) in keeping our cattle 
out. "What comes around, goes around." We kept their beef products out b/c 
they had only 7 (IIRC) cases of mad cow. They fixed their regulatory system 
as a result (of the mad cows) yet we still kept their beef out (for that 
reason I fail to shed tears for our beef farmers... they weren't exactly 
clamouring for the Japanese to be let back in when they fixed things up).

1. it was a case where BSE arose spontaneously, OR it was a BSE-like disease 
(this was my *very* first thought when I heard the report... especially 
given that it was only one case). Spongiform encephalopathies are not the 
exclusive domain of "prions", and do not necessarily have to be transmitted 
to develop. Enough humans have developed variant-KJD (Kreuzfeld-Jacob 
disease... essentially the same as BSE except it's often inherited) on their 
own to demonstrate that it can arise spontaneously!!! There's no reason to 
expect that BSE couldn't arise through mutation of a scaffolding-enzyme 
(another protein that helps other proteins fold in the proper manner).

2. It was transmitted to the cow through contaminated feed -- likely given 
the cow's history (i.e. the cow was fed animal protein -- BSE is a protein 
transmitted only through the food chain or parent to offspring (not sure if 
it can be transmitted to an offspring through semen)).

It is the latter issue (animal protein fed to animals) that put the 
proverbial "nail in Maggie Thatcher's coffin" at the end of her 
administration.

The tragedy of the UK situation was that in '79 the gov't of the day was on 
the verge of implementing strict regulations governing the processing of 
animal carcases being fed human food-chain animals, but Thatcher's gov't 
(elected fall of 79) reversed this decision when they came to power because 
of her (gov'ts) ideological bent (free market *free* of oversight). The idea 
was that the marketplace would determine the best way to reach the end goal 
of "food safety" (the intent of the regs) and people would derive benefit 
from having cheaper food.

Failing to implement the (then) new, much more rigorous regs proved to be 
the fatal mistake, especially given what the gov't scientists were telling 
their handlers at the time (the mistake was fixed by the late 80s but it was 
too late for the people who went on to developed fatal vKJD).

The savings derived from allowing the marketplace to best determine the path 
of meeting the end goal were dwarfed by the total collapse of the UK beef 
market, and, more importantly, in the total collapse of confidence in 
government scientists (this is one of the most compelling arguments for why 
science should be done INDEPENDENT of gov't and business -- gov't has to 
worry about getting re-elected (pleasing people... through, for e.g., the 
stupidity of subsidised and flat-rate power) and pleasing business, and 
business itself has every motivation to keep bad news quiet as "proprietary" 
information)).

This situation was further compounded by ideology and public relations fears 
-- gov't scientists had already sounded the alarm about BSE in the EARLY 70s 
(though, what *exactly* it was wasn't recognised into the 80s... they knew 
there was a problem) ... (in)famously used by someone in Harper's magazine 
(Barry Commoner - senile (only way to explain his complete ignorance of 50 
years of research) geneticist turned environmentalist) last year to argue 
that GM foods are dangerous because scientists still believe in the "central 
dogma" of genetics (a somewhat insightful though vendetta-laced editorial 
(ignore the first 2-3 pages... it's a personal attack on Crick (of Watson 
and Crick fame (of course, there are strong suspiscions that Watson and 
Crick plagiarised to some (or whole) extent other people's work... neither 
person actually went on to do much good work afterwards (or before))). 
Anyway, the danger from BSE was dwarfed by the idological and self-serving 
bungling by Thatcher's gov't.

In a way the BSE crisis was useful -- it has made Europeans (and especially 
Brits) skeptical of genetically modified foods and has slowed (and even 
reversed) their adoption (sometimes GM stuff has its place -- reducing 
pesticide use in cotton for example, but in other cases it simply shifts the 
burden from one pesticide to another (& exacerbates the problem of 
mono-culture and a miniscule genetic variability (& thus robustness) in the 
food supply)). Though I doubt that they're all that dangerous, wide-spread 
use of GM is an ecological disaster in the making (plus, there's no 
guarantee that we won't see health consequences either (scientists who claim 
there won't be any are flat out lieing -- they cannot make such claims & are 
no longer speak as scientists but as cheerleaders of an untested 
technology)) -- natural selection resulting in evolution is awfully efficent 
and with such a wonderful new set of genes on which to perform selection 
mother nature must be rubbing her hands with glee (for all the havoc she may 
wreak... provided she's mischievous as she no doubt is ;).

Eric.

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