From Mark Terrell
Bridlington East Yorkshire
Surely the Germans are right to ban all British beef on the grounds that
the argument for the confinement of the BSE agent to the central nervous system
is inconsistent?
Removal of the brain and spinal cord implies that this agent is confined to
the cerebrospinal fluid. Yet the disease is manifested in the mass of glial
cells and neurons. The projections of the latter extend from the spinal cord as
peripheral nerves into all tissues, especially the muscles.
Until the causation of this disease is revealed and in the absence of
statistically valid data, the only certainty is uncertainty at this stage.
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• • •
It is now widely recognised that the disease of sheep scrapie jumped
species to cattle under the new name of BSE when cows were fed sheep remains. It
is increasingly feared that BSE can jump again to cause a strain of
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.
Why, amid the rising panic about eating beef, have I heard no worries
expressed about eating lamb? Is there a scientific reason why scrapie cannot
jump direct to humans, or has nobody put two and two together?
T. J. Stevenson
Bracknell, Berkshire
No studies have as yet shown any correlation between the incidence of scrapie
in sheep and the incidence of CJD in humans—Ed
