From Reuben Leberman
The results of the proposed experiments to inject brain samples from infected
animals into mice as a diagnostic method for BSE, scrapie or vCJD would be of
little relevance unless suitable controls were carried out, namely the injection
of equivalent material from unaffected animals.
And if there are many strains of scrapie, then pooled and mixed samples of
affected brains cannot be used if you want meaningful results.
All that aside, experiments involving the injection of brain extracts into
the brains or spinal cords of experimental animals leave us still in doubt as to
the relationship between BSE and vCJD, since injection into the central nervous
system is not the usual way to ingest hamburgers.
If there is a relationship between eating meat from BSE-affected cattle and
developing vCJD, then the number of cases of vCJD should be rising
exponentially, but it is not. So it is unfortunate that mainstream BSE and vCJD
researchers do not take George Venters’s claims more seriously
(20 October, p12)—but
then they may have their research grants to consider.
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Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire
