Information given by individuals to others as gossip
Because it is gossip it must not be considered to be the
absolute truth until it is checked in some way. This must not
be taken as an insult to anyone as none is intended. There are
no evil people involved in the subject whatever and everyone has
taken large amounts of time and effort in carrying out what they
feel is the best
However, what seems the best for the farmer may not seem the
best for the consumer and what is best for the politician to
keep the populus calm may not be the whole of the information
that the populus feels should have been given. (a lot of farmers
are, however, very honest and I would not pretend that it
applied to all).
(but this is now fairly out of date)
N.B. This section is in reverse order so that the most
recent gossip is at the top of the page
October 1997
- The Medicine Control Agency has ordered the withdrawal of
plasma from donors developing nvCJD.
- Now this is a
disaster for the report from the DofH only two weeks ago in that
it indicates that the MCA (based at the DofH) feels that we
should presume a risk to be involved. Apparently the MCA were
ordered by the Committee on Proprietary Medical Products (the
CPMP, which is a Europe-based organisation) and the decisions at
that committee were based all over Europe. What it cannot get
around is the admission that we cannot know how many of the
donors are incubating the disease and that we must assume their
blood to represent a risk. All very difficult in that the DofH
is doing its best to maintain the use of blood in the UK and the
media may take this up to show to the population that the blood
they are being given cannot be looked on as safe. The
possibility that all UK blood and blood products may be banned
from export in the same way as beef was brought up. The fact
that we export little may not get around the media hype that
would be expected to follow.
- A lot of media noise is going around concerning the blood
transfusion problems.
- Exactly why I am not sure in that
the Department of Health handled it really very well.
- Harash Narang is going to be publishing a second book
soon.
- Further details to follow
- Prionics antibody to be announced.
- The antibody
that is active against PrPsc but not PrPc, a monoclonal from
Bruno Oesch et al in Switzerland it to be announced but it is
not clear where or when at the moment. Try
http://www.prionics.ch/address.htm or html (it has not been
working recently).
- Charities may open nvCJD branch.
- A major
organisor for the collection of funds for BSE victims and
research may be organised in the S of England soon. At the
moment the politics are being worked out.
- Worry in the treasury over inquiry
- The main
reason why a judicial inquiry may not take place is being
suggested as being the cost (as below). Information is coming
through that farmers may be made responsible for the damage
caused by their produce, should it be outside the standards set
by the EU. Apparently this is being discussed in the EU and it
was actually brought up because of BSE. The inquiry would
probably decide that the responsibility for the cattle being fed
infective material was due to the UK Government and, should the
farmers be accused as being the cause of any cases of nvCJD then
the cost may fall on the UK Government. This actually seem
extremely unlikely in that it is almost impossible to show which
beefburger caused anyone to develop the disease. What may
result, however is that the EU bypasses the 'proof of fault'
that would be required and simply says that nvCJD cases in
general are the responsibility of the UK. All very complex
legality gossip but not something that will keep the treasury
happy.
- Still no news of how the MAFF are going to deal with the
huge overload of material for incineration and with judicial
inquiry
- The worry is that there will be no judicial
inquiry into BSE simply because it would find out things that
would cost the current government too much money. Initially
people felt that the costs may have been because the relatives
of CJD victims would sue the Government using the inquiry
details. Now, however, it appears that the problem may actually
be the cost of repaying farmers for their losses. No news about
the inquiry 4 days after it was expected to have been discussed
by cabinet.
- Department of Health crushes the press over CJD in
blood.
- The Department found out about the Watchdog
program in advance and put out its own press conference to show
that the risk from blood transfusion was minimal. This left the
BBC with nothing to say and the press was not watching. In fact
the problem will return again and again but the DofH breaths its
sigh of relief that the blood transfusion service is not stopped.
- Within the last 15 years, there has been a serious
outbreak
of scrapie in New Mexico amongst the wild Rocky Mountain Bighorn
sheep.
- The thing about scrapie is that it didn't really
go around in epidemics but rather as endemics that came and went
but generally not very much. The fact that this is an epidemic
is strange, as if there is a further factor in volved (like the
scrapie epidemic in Norway currently underway). this small herd
was very nearly decimated, and they are near extinction.
they captured as many as they could, kept them at the Rio Grande
Zoo in
Albuquerque, and then they were released.
- Department of Health has blood transfusion press
conference.
- This may have been an error in that yet
again they (and the people from the National Blood Authority)
used the main argument as being 'there is no proof that CJD is
transferred to humans by blood transfusion'. The journalists
saw straight through this one as being very similar to 'there is
no proof that beef represents a risk' that came from MAFF for
many years. All it meant was that MAFF had not got the ability
to find out and it was too early to know if humans eating beef
developed disease. Similarly the journalists were not impressed
by the DofH and simply realised that 'no proof' really meant 'no
experiments done yet'. They were saying that the DofH really
must not do this sort of thing because the MAFF credibility was
ruined by BSE and taking the 'everything's all right' stance
when really we dont know is not the clever way to procede.
Journalists are a crafty bunch and the DofH does not seem to be
treating them as such.
- Stan Prusiner gets the Nobel Prize for Science.
-
This appears to have hit the US press already and is heading for
the UK press tomorrow (6.10.97). The problem with this one is
that there was (and is in some areas) so much interpersonal eye
scratching going on among the various researchers that it may
turn out to be quite easy for the press to find people in
Berlin, Yale and Edinburgh that are not all that pleased.
- Blood transfusion risks meetings.
- The big
problem with this one is that there is no way of working out the
size of the risk involved but, as the result might be so
serious, a number of groups appear to want to make meetings to
discuss it.
September 1997
- Call for end to red meat promotions.
- This comes
from the Vegetarian Society and follows the indication in the
BMJ that red meat is associated with bowel cancer in people
eating large amounts. They also say that the BSE risk was
unacceptable and that there are many other diseases that are
decreased in vegetarians (heart attacks for instance).
- Harash Narang takes the Public Health Laboratory Service
to Court.
- A writ is to be handed in to the high court
tomorrow (Thursday 25th September) accusing the PHLS of
malicious activity against him.
(There seems to be a chance that he may actually win this one in
that the PHLS were simply told by higher government not to carry
out any work on BSE and Harash Narang did carry out work but in
a manner that was apparently accepable to the directions he was
given personally. He lost his job for an obscure reason at the
time. The problem for the PHLS (who seem to be in the middle of
this one) is that Harash managed to get hold of large amounts of
official documents apparently indicating that they wanted to get
rid of him for his work on TSEs and not for the reason put
forward by them at the time. Scientists in the field would
really wish that all this was finished off but too much
officialdom is involved and too much personal pride. What the
court hearings would almost certainly mean is that much of the
information that would be demanded by a judicial inquiry may
actually be demanded by the high court anyway. The main reason
that many people in MAFF dont want a judicial inquiry is simply
that they have a lot of other work to do; the court hearing may
mean that they have to carry out the work even if the inquiry
does not take place - Ed).
- Tension rising over judicial inquiry.
- It appears
that various people high up in the UK Government have made it
clear that they want to have an inquiry and to get on with it
soon. The reason seems to be that this would be the time to get
the most political capital out of it and to be able to interview
many people still working for MAFF that seem to have been
involved with the hiding of information early in the epidemic.
Jack Cunningham said that the decision as to whether to go ahead
with the inquiry lies with members of the cabinet and not just
with him. The people at MAFF and CVL would probably rather just
get on with dealing with the desease than work on information
for an inquiry.
- Meeting in France.
- For some reason only a
relatively small number of researchers are being accepted for
the Phillip Laudat meeting in France in November. Again it is
really quite odd in that some well known scientists are being
turned down...but officials of Governments are being accepted.
- New information about US nvCJD case.
- Apparently
the case referred to by the media may well have been a case at
the University of South Florida, a patient of doctors (I have
been asked not to give thier names) who was clinically diagnosed
as having CJD and the Miami Herald picked it up as a case of
possible nvCJD. The information going around suggests that the
patient did not have a post mortem and was a 51yr old man.
Maybe there are two cases (as has been suggested elsewhere) but
the publication of the case is required in the scientific press
and expected to be in the NEJM.
- Judicial Inquiry.
- David Bode, the man that has
carried out a lot of the legal activities on behalf of the CJD
families, helped organise it but it turned out that the letter
to be published in the New Statesman did not fit all of the
potential signatures perfectly: in fact the number of people
that wanted the inquiry was really very large amongst the
scientific community but most of the people in the field could
not sign because of the Official Secrets Act. It seems that
they did very well to get the signatures that they did in the
time available (about 3 days).
- Judicial Inquiry.
- I am told that some of the
people asked to sign in the scientific field actually said they
would write directly to the minister asking for the same thing.
Whether this will make a difference is unclear but it has not
happened before. The worry has been that Labour have organised
inquiries into many other things since being in office but not
BSE, a subject that sticks out glaringly as requiring one.
Apparently MAFF is sticking its heels in and doing its best to
stop the inquiry taking place (possibly because it has quite
enough work to do stopping BSE).
- Case of nvCJD in USA.
- I am told that the case
was in Florida but taken outside florida for PM. That it is in a
52 yr old woman (gossip from BBC). No confirmation has come
from the US TSE scientists but also no denial from the US at
all. The worry is that the BBC are in fact digging up a case of
CJD and claiming that it is nvCJD because that is what they are
being told by the author. However, claims have been made that
it is to be published in the NEJM soon.
- nv-CJD Families change to 'human BSE' name.
- The
lady in charge, Lisa Harvey has made it quite clear that they
simply do not want to use the name nvCJD any more and that it
should not be referred to as 'human BSE'. There will be little
that can annoy Whitehall more than this.
- Judicial inquiry demand.
- This time the demand
has come from the scientific groups that were involved with BSE
from the beginning and the researchers that were involved with
human risk analysis. It has come through the article in the New
Statesman and is to be presented to the Government in the second
week of September. What they say behind the scenes is that the
results of any judicial enquiry would take so long that they
would come out just before the next general election and would
be politically severe for the Tory government under Mr. Major.
The aim seems to be mainly to make sure that this sort of
problem does not happen again.
August 1997
- Environmental Agency looks on the bright side.
-
It now seems that the calculations used by the EA to calculate
the risks from contaminated material in the environment getting
into water and soil were really quite optimistic. The figures
were put forward when used to justify the spreading of partially
filtered material from an abattoir onto the land. They took the
level of infection needed to infect a human to be really very
high and the amount of infection in bovine tissue to be about
1000 times too low i.e. they did not seem to have taken into
account the factor that MAFF figures for infectivity in tissues
were measured by inoculation into mice and are now known to be
between 1000 and 10,000 times to low.
- Loss of UK credibility in Europe: other departments point
at MAFF.
- Apparently, the action last summer by the UK
Government to prevent EC work, was seen as grossly ignorant by
the other members and they have, as a result looked on all of
the functions of the UK Government as being not fully credible.
The Department of Health is particularly fed up in that it was
kept out from BSE activity, BSE research, BSE public health
assessment etc and now it is having to repolish its tarnished
image in Europe. The new article 129 (actually originally from
Maastricht), which gives the EC the right to impose directives
and to give money to induce better health care was a direct
result of the BSE crisis in that it takes food safety from the
agriculture department of the EC and gives it to the health
department.
- Prionics, a company may have a specific test for
TSE.
- Simply by accident a monoclonal antibody appeared
which could identify the prion protein in its abnormal form and
yet steer clear of the normal form of it. Bruno Oesch in
Switzerland came up with this and started up the company to
sell the antibody, initially to research institutions.
Hopefully it will work, but monoclonals have a relatively low
affinity for the antigen. Prionics have a web site but I cannot
currently get through to it. Have a go at
http://www.prionics.ch/address.htm or html This has not
worked for me I might say.
- Delfia, arrive with BSE test.
- It appears that
the researcher for Delfia, a finnish research company that sells
time resolved fluorimetry machines, managed to produce a
relatively sensitive test for the prion protein in a few weeks.
This cannot look good with MAFF having been supposedly working
on it for 7 years.
- Major researcher at Central Veterinary Laboratory
quits.
- For some reason one of the major workers on BSE
has got fed up and left. This follows a previous quit by Ian
McGill, major researcher into BSE in the early 1990s and the
sacking of Mike Richards in 1997, statistician that would have
given MAFF all the bad news about humans eating infected cattle.
- The difficulty in deciding what to do with the MBM is
still here.
- MAFF and the Dept of Industry are still
wondering what to do and gossip says that no decisions have been
arrived at while the silos appear to be becoming full of the
material.
- Possible cases of nv-CJD were users of insulin before
1987.
- Two cases so far have appeared and have died
recently. PMs are on the way presumably.
- Farmers seem to want to make it difficult for the food
group.
- One food group that was accused of having
accused british beef inaccurately by having placards in Paris
warning the locals about the risks from british beef was accused
by the NFU in the press. The NFU has never been known to keep
its mouth shut when it did not know enough about the subject and
so the food group asked for damages in the courts...but the NFU
are demanding that a lot of money is put up front by the food
group with the court and this may stop any legal action.
- Organohalogen: fluoroacetemide released on soil.
-
It is still unclear as to the source of BSE and the OP argument
continues. The information on the release of 2 tonnes of the
substance onto soil and the removal of the topsoil by the MAFF
at the Midox chemical factory in Smarden (Kent) has been
suggested as a cause of the original production of BSE.
- Thruxted Mill critics begin to understand the
science.
- The problem with Truxted mill near Ashford
was always that the fluid from the mill was put into the ground
in a run-off and some of the material in the water remained on
the surface. There was an official meeting looking into this
and everyone was told that the Environmental Agency had decided
the risks were minimal. The critics have now apparently looked
into the reasons given and realised that some of them are not
really valid. "It has always been a BSE phenomenon of assuming
the audience to be ignorant and you can tell them anything. It
now seems that certain scientific fragments were misleading and
deliberately so".
- Skating on thin ice.
- It has now come through
that MAFF realised in 1995/6 that it was taking a major risk
with BSE and that if it turned out to be a risk to humans then
it could lead to a major catastrophe. As explained by another
person: if the ice is thin, you do not skate on it and it may
have been realised by political circles that the risks taken
should not have been.
- BSE infected sheep.
- It now seems that when the
experiments were carried out concerning the transfer of BSE
between species and the same glycoform of PrP being produced,
they also looked at the PrP of new cases of scrapie in sheep.
It found to be the same and hence BSE was transferred to sheep.
What was not available was the data as to where the sheep case
was derived. It was not clear, for instance, that the case of
BSE in sheep was in fact a wild case of clinical scrapie.
However, the response of the UK Government, banning all sheep
brain and spinal cord from the human diet might suggest that the
experiment had indicated BSE to be present in the ovine
population in the UK.
- Incinerators are having a difficult time.
- The
gas burning incinerators that were being designed to get rid of
the MBM are not being agreed quickly by the local authorities
and the local people, who seem totally bent on stopping them.
The original one at Wem in Shropshire has got no further and
another one has been planned on the other side of the town. The
one at Acre in Shropshire seems to have gone ahead quite easily
and is now burning material. Staffordshire Local Council is
quite determined not to have any of the incinerators on its land
and other councils may actually have taken the same route.
- The storage of MBM is getting tight.
- The MAFF
seems to be handing out excess amounts of money to people that
are willing to set up MBM storage facilities. The reason is
simply that the current facilities are virtually packed to the
eyeballs. One of them on the South Coast is actually damaged
and it seems that they cannot put any more in or taken any out
for fear that the building will collapse. What did not seem to
be realised by the storage people was that the MBM did not
usually have any lifetime and the damp conditions in the UK at
the moment along with the high temperatures have led to
bacterial fermentation of the material. They are apparently now
getting too hot. The reports of rats associated with the
storage of MBM has not worried anyone yet but this has not been
looked into to any great degree. Stories of maverick silo
builders are rife. One was about a man with plenty of money
that was driving around simply asking anyone with a silo of any
kind if he could buy it and put MBM in it.
- One new incinerator group say they can heat the MBM up to
very high temperatures.
- The actual method is not at all
clear but seems to get to the temperature needed to destroy any
possible infectivity. The main advantage seems to be that the
equipment can probably be on the sites of the rendering
companies and so the MBM need not go through a lot of transport
procedures.
- Fifth case of BSE in Germany.
- The main thing
about this case is that it is not at all clear that the animal
was imported from the UK. Official attempts are being made to
suggest this but it appears to be the offspring of a local dam
and there is not that much evidence that it was even fed
infected meal...could it be the dam that was actually infected?
- Powerstations to be bought by Government.
-
Cunningham said that they might do this to incincerate MBM. The
gossip says that the government were asked to pay such a large
indeminity in advance to Powergen or National Power that it was
simply not worth their while. The problem has always been that
when dealing with MBM there might be a risk to the worker...but
of course when putting the MBM in the silos or the military
sites the workers were not wearing anything to protect them.
When, however the MBM arrived at Nat Power they would meet
workers wearing breathing gear! There was obviously going to be
arguments. If, however the same people ran the incinerators as
ran the silos there wouldn't be a problem.
- McDonalds will be taking UK beef but....
- of
course it will not be able to get any beef from old cheap cattle
in the UK! Nor will Burger King. The question that is being put
around at the moment is whether imports will just continue as
previously.
- Disastrous ABPI meeting.
- The drug companies made
it clear that they really were not interested in the research
needed into methods of treatment for nvCJD. The reason was
apparently that they thought that there were simply not enough
cases that needed treatment. The only thing they offered was
some reasearch if it was involved with Alzheimer's disease. The
researchers at the meeting left looking fairly depressed.
- Erlichman returns.
- The Guardian research
journalist that produced the articles about BSE that were
shocking for the previous Government is now back but with
Channel 4...and producing a program about BSE.
- EU funding for research into BSE is poor
- . The
great problems that have appeared concerning the EU funding have
been that there really are not many places in the continent that
can carry out the pure research that are required. The requests
for funding have to be in by the end of July but it looks to be
a difficult thing.
- Researchers admit that they were told not to tell anyone
about their results.
- It is now becoming clear that much
of the research that took place into BSE was deliberately kept
quiet and the researchers involved are actually having a
difficult time in understanding that hiding information is no
longer necessary.
- The new Food Standards Agency may contain much of
MAFF.
- When researchers look at the layout of the FSA
they realise that much of it will contain the same staff as MAFF
and the worry is that MAFF spent a lot of its time telling its
staff to keep everything totally silent. It will probably be
difficult in getting them to realise that the FSA is to be
organised in the same way as the Environment Agency i.e.
'transparent' at all forms. In other words 'nothing' should be
kept hidden. Quite a change but the worry is that the staff
will not know how to do it.
- The Environment Agency's initial report.
- This
has looked at the various methods of disposing of BSE infected
or rendered material and says that none of them really show any
obvious risk. The question is as to who advised the EA and
various groups are wondering if it all came from MAFF. The one
thing that stuck out was that the rendering plant in Kent that
spread its wash-down water onto local land (and this was given
the OK by EA at the local meeting), should actually stop doing
this and certain parts of this water should be injected deep
into the land rather than spread on the surface.
July 1997
- More suggestions are appearing that the USA may refuse UK
blood donors and blood products.
- This would really not
be surprising in that the regulations introduced in the USA
against the potential of CJD infected blood are quite harsh.
Exactly what they are thinking of doing is not clear but a
meeting with the specific group at the Center for Disease
Control in Atlanta suggested that people that had been eating UK
beef might be seen as a risk although the exact level of that
risk cannot currently be said.
- It appears that pressure is appearing to change the
status of rendered material so that it does not need to be
incinerated.
- The official reason is probably because we
are running out of sites to store it, and that there are simply
not enough incineration sites in the UK working with which to
carry out the incineration. What is probably more important is
that the amount of money that it costs to incinerate only some
and burn the rest will be less, and the changes in the payment
made to the renderers have started to fall as of March 1997. It
seems to be the renderers that are pushing for the changes in
regulations (which would allow them to burn the material on site
with very few regulations concerning BSE), and it is MAFF that
decides whether they are allowed to do it. It already seems
that many local authorities are unhappy with incinerators being
produced on their sites and not giving permission for their
building. The incinerators are being labelled as 'mobile' by
the applicants, which would decrease the ability of the local
authorities to do this, but still things are too tight. It
seems that the permission being given yesterday by the
Environmental Agency for power station incineration of rendered
products may turn out to be irrelevant if the renderers get
their way.
- Cunningham says that we will not import beef from places
that do not carry out the same abattoir regulations.
-
This is simply due to the worry that we may be importing cattle
that have been infected with BSE (or even sheep). This seems
really quite reasonable in that the Labour Government have
admitted that the risk is there. The question remains as to why
SEAC were so determined that sheep might actually have BSE. The
gossip collumn says that they were told from the Norwegian
outbreak of scrapie that really it wasn't scrapie but BSE and
that they now have some evidence for that.
- Environmental Agency is to police the incinerators of
bovine bodies.
- This is quite surprising in that MAFF
has always liked to police things that affect it. However the
EA from Leeds (Roger Hyde, Regional General Manager, Rivers
House, 21 Park Sq S, Leeds LS1 2QG, but Mr Snoddy is on 01642
633753, Environment Agency direct line 01642 853415, Swan
House,Merchants Wharf,Westpoint Road,Thornaby,Cleveland TS17
6BP.) is to make sure that all the incinerators in the country
are up to standard. They are making sure that 850C in the
presence of oxygen is the final burn that will destroy the agent
(and this does sound reasonable despite the results reported in
the Observer). Message from Chris Clayton:
The inspector surprisingly came out with incredulous
disagreement with
Govt policy (on the basis of the advice they receive) because
the blood
from the carcasses is to be poured onto agricultural land and not
destroyed...this seemed to the inspector to be incredibly
lax.....but
he was powerless as this is the remit of the scientific advisors
to
HMG.
June 1997
- Oprah Winfrey is to be sued by the beef lobby.
-
Oprah is a big person on the TV talk shows in california. She
stated that she had given up eating beef because she was worried
about its safety. They want to sue her for the effect she had.
I hear that the same thing could be true elsewhere in that other
people have stated their worry about the safety of US beef and
they also may be sued.
- Environment Agency has to make a final decision on the go
ahead
for the Rufforth incinerator near York in July
- and that
the planning committees
decision to grant this planning permission is not the last word
after
all. Contact Chriss Clayton:
http://freespace.virgin.net/chris.clayton/homepage.htm
May 1997
- The Norwegian Broadcasting news service (Text TV) May
21th.
- :
Animal Health Institute in Edinburgh has conformed that the 11
year old
norwegian dog died of a prion disease similar to BSE. This is
the first
confirmed case in the world, but they rule out the possibility
that the
dog is infected through pet food.
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