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).

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Go to the definitions page
Go to the gossip before July 1996, often still significant
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Go to the gossip between November 1996 and May 1997
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Go to the gossip between November 1997 and February 1998
Dont forget to go to the news gossip sections

July 1998

List of pharmaceuticals that contained bovine products appeared.

Insulin, glucagon, aprotin, surfactant, gelatin (bones), stearate (tallow), polysorbate (tallow), lactose, peptone, pepticase, meat extracts, foetal calf serum, glycerol, heparin. (plus all the substances made from them). When asked he made it clear that it was more likely to be which pharmaceuticals did not contain bovine products that was a more useful question.

The haematologists of the UK seem extremely annoyed as to why they were not told of the risks from blood transfusion of nvCJD.

They had got almost no data at all prior to the announcement on the 17th July 1998 that leucodepletion was to be introduced. Various groups had in fact approached Lacey because they could not get the information from official sources. Although some data had indicated that blood was over used in the UK, minimal information reached the various medical groups telling them to use it less. A major document was issued by the DofH/BTS several weeks before about the infective risks of blood transfusion: nvCJD was not mentioned.

Should people visiting UK be warned about UK blood and tissue transplantations?

This is thought to be yet another horror story for the press to enjoy. Of course there will be a risk from UK blood even with leucodepletion (hopefully much lower because of it) and the tissues cant even have that. Again there may well be a EC regulation appearing concerning UK tissues and the various committees will undoubtedly be looking at them.

Dealler, inundated by the press, could not contact the DofH as the transfusion melt down continued on 17.7.98.

Apparently he had tried around 5 times that day and had rung the DofH both the day before and before that as well to indicate what was to come out at the York meeting. Eventually he reached Dr. Metters and it was decided that he would stop giving certain information. At that point he stopped giving further interviews. He also could not contact the Press Office (they were saying that the risk from nvCJD was one in 4 million, a figure that was clearly wrong to anyone with a biro and an envelope).

Will Patterson, Public Health doc in York was yet again the hero of the day at the meeting there on 16th July 1998.

This was the only person that seemed to have the nerve to make it public to the populus that blood transfusion (and indeed many other hospital associated actions) may involve the transfer of nvCJD. He organised the meeting in 1996 that brought out the data of BSE and nvCJD and he has done it again. It was clear to the audience again that the man deserved applause.

UK Blood Transfusion people admit that problems are on the way.

This was at the York meeting and, as far as I know it was first time that they gave out publicly information showing that there was likely to be a risk from the blood they were providing. Full marks had to go to John Barbara and Peter Flannagan, who went through the risks and the data from the scientific literature...and ended up explaining how they expected the blood service to change.

Department of Health push ahead with leucodepletion: a price to pay.

Apparently they had the information from SEAC several days before the York meeting and so were ready to announce the leucodepletion as being their policy. If they had not had this, then there would have been more of the `Dealler is misleading you' type snippets from the DofH press office. However, in the end everyone seem to agree but the cost now seems to be high, with the price of a unit of blood rising probably to twice the current cost (about to 60 pounds).

The UK Government had the data available for some time that blood transfusion should not be considered safe because of nvCJD.

It is not really surprising that, if plasma products are unsafe after dilution to a large extent, then blood will not be either as that would not be diluted. It is said that the Government had the data indicating this from early this year...but then again the information used to work this out was available as of the beginning of 1997 and the UK blood transfusion service had been warned about it a long time earlier.

It is now accepted officially that the levels of infectivity in various tissues are about 103 times as those announced earlier in the decade.

This was simply because, instead of assuming that 1IU of BSE would infect mice it was found out that about 1000IU would be required. What has not happened yet, however is that they dont seem to have realised that the figures published have to be multiplied by an even greater figure. The reason is that, if 1IU is needed, then it is possible to take into account the number of mice inoculated when calculating the level of infectivity present I the inoculum: e.g. if 1000 mice are inoculated and none die then there could be considered to be nil IU in 1000 inocula. However, if 1000IU are needed, then all you can say is that there is less than 1000IU in any one inoculum. As a result, the sensitivity of the tests used is not just 1000 times lower but about 20 times less than that, because they were using commonly 20 mice! This still does not seem to have got through to MAFF or its researchers but no doubt SEAC will find out.

Inquiry brings out the realisation that the CVL research group were quite inadequately funded to carry on the work that was needed.

Bradley seemed to have had to carry on his responsibility of telling everyone that all was fine but was left with inadequate staff and funding to actually show this.

Almond has been putting over the idea that, of the choices open to MAFF at the beginning of the BSE epidemic, they picked the most reasonable.

However, he has only suggested that the two possibilities were that either we had to assume BSE to be infective, and that would lead to all cattle being slaughtered (and that would not even be certain to lead to BSE disappearing as new cattle may have become infected from the land), or we could assume that BSE was the same as scrapie and take a risk with the population if they were wrong...and therefore the UK Government took the right idea in that it picked out the worst parts of the animal and decreased the risk to humans as much as possible. He was criticised by many people afterwards at the York meeting on blood transfusion: `could they not have just told the population what was going on?', `could they not have told the medical profession, the House of Commons etc?', `could they not have been more aggressive in the prevention of the specific offals from reaching human diets, or even have been more determined in making sure that tissue infected in other species did not reach human diets (liver, lung, bone marrow, nerves etc)'. A German member of the audience was worried that SEAC was again being converted by MAFF. (Ed - Almond has been one of the most open with information in fact and probably this criticism is unreasonable)

Dealler quoted by Times and Mail as indicating that blood would be unsafe in UK.

In fact Dealler had not spoken to either of them and the information probably reached the papers from members of the audience at the York meeting. However he had made it clear that the 1 in 125 blood transfusions being from an infected person was a relatively friendly worst case scenario for the risk. The mathematics for this was simple and done on the board in front of the audience: so it was difficult to get around. Presumably the papers wanted a major story. He was woken up at 6am on the day the story appeared and spent the rest of the day telling the media that there were ways around the problem including the opportunity of using leucodepletion, pentosan as a prophylactic and autologous blood transfusion. By midday the DofH had decided to go ahead with the 52 million pounds for leucodepletion and the story faded.

The York meeting on nvCJD transfer by blood and medical practice was originally to be a closed meeting but the press were invited 2 days in advance.

By this time the speakers had put their information on handouts for the meeting and they were to be simply given out to all of the audience...so it was too late to stop. The organiser was never expecting it to be a closed meeting, however, and so it just seems to have been an internal error. As it was TV cameras were there and from then it was impossible to stop the information reaching the public.

Tallow is being banned from all pharmaceutical products.

It is not clear exactly why in that there is 'no scientific evidence that tallow contains infectivity', however they say that the hydrophobic nature of the tallow and it being made partly from bone marrows in the formation of gelatin means that tallow must be looked on as a risk. What they have not said, however is that tallow continued to be in bovine feed in the UK long after the feed ban of 1988. Eventually it twigged that this might not be a good idea but Wilesmith had said that the distribution of disease was not the same as the spread of tallow from an infective source...but he had far too poor data. So now things appear to be getting worse for tallow and the original demand of the UK ban on tallow exports seems to continue.

BSE the 'most expensive disaster since the war'.

The National Audit Office is saying in a report. What they dont say too clearly, however is that much of the costs could have been avoided for various reasons and the heavy permission of the disease to infect cattle past 1988 as BABs must have cost enormous sums.

New proposals on the way to replace EC534.

These seem to eclude large numbers of products that would seem to have nothing to do with the transmition of nvCJD. Isabelle Peutz from EC is determined that the companies do not get away with simply denying risk because there is no obvious proof.

Narang is getting ready to blast the Public Health Lab at the Phillips Inquiry.

His statement is now on the Phillips web site but it is clear that he has become much better at putting over his data and much better at showing that PHL are not playing the game in any way. Not only that he is showing that they prevented major and important research from taking place...(in the past I could have not believed him because it seems so bezarre but I now know it to be true - Ed).

Dr. Hill who was the major person demanding blood products to be without any risk of nvCJD seems to have got a lot of his data from undesired sources.

We dont know what they are yet but they may have been from various non-blood transfusion groups that had been looking into the field.

The Gelatin Manufacturers of Europe.

A very smooth group with a huge throughput. I really didnt realise just how bit it was and the explanation of how gelatin was made from numerous sources and there was various manufacturing techniques to work out the realtive risk...all this means that the GME are determined that there is no risk from their produts. Slightly hopeful, however, as Inveresk Co, who carried out tests on the gelatin manufacture methods only really found a 3 log reduction by the method that was being used. This did not look good at a meeting in London.

Various industries are screaming about EC 534.

This is the directive that indicates that any product derived from tissues that may be infected with BSE must not be used. It virually bans all bovine products for pharmaceutical use in the EC! Also it bans the Americans from using them either and they are absolutely furious as they dont (they say) have any BSE. Arguments are going on at the EC in Brussels about all this and new directives are put out. At the moment the directives are changing and it looks as if all this is to be left until the beginning of 1999 for introduction.

Bradley at the BSE Inquiry came over as having worked hard but could not get everything done.

A lot of people felt that they were pushed around by the decisions of Bradley but it now seems that he tried his best for the industry.

They are now saying that the CPMP should have acted in 1992.

This was against blood products. It is not clear how they would have worked this out but the talk is going around saying this.

Worry has appeared that the feeding of chicken faeces has led to more BSE.

The reason for this is simply because the chickens were fed on MBM in the UK and then their feces (which of course would contain 99% of the infectivity fed to the chickens) are added to bovine feed as a source of urea, which is then turned into some proteinaceous material by the rumen.

Determination that there are more cases of BSE in Europe than they are reporting.

This was agreed by certain scientists but the official figures are said to be far too low at a IIR meeting in London. Prof Almond simply pointed out that if we saw so many cattle that did not have BSE but had something else, then by rights the Europeans should have seen them also. Not the whole story, however, as the import into UK from Europe of cattle that then died of BSE and the admission of much greater numbers in Portugal are all not biding well.

The Pharmaceutical Industry representative was cut down over claiming that gelatn risks were minimal.

What he actually did was to show quite inadequate data on the screen and expect the audience to swallow it whole. What actually happened was that they did not and one of them was (too) rude and told him that trying to tell the scientists such nonsense simply would not stand up. Afterwards the person that said this talked to the speaker and told him how things should go...but it looks as if the pharmaceutical industry is going to fight the EU regulations.

Phillips Inquiry is bringing out the inadequacy of the MAFF.

The more this is looked at it seems that simply too few people were being used to try to do anything about BSE. The latest data about it costing 3.5 billion pounds indicated fairly clearly after Bradley had spoken that they simply were not given enough budget to act early on.

Blood transfusion experiments becoming hopeful.

It seems that the leukodepletion experiments are indeed able to decrease the level of PrP in the blood...but the information on decreasing infectivity is going to be difficult to get any fingers on at all. Indeed people in the field are worried that it may not work adequately to be of any value.

June 1998

The Public Health Laboratory Service has asked that Harash Narang's statement to the BSE inquiry is withdrawn or modified.

It is not at all clear why they have done this in that all the dirty linen will be washed at the court anyway. They say it contains malicious falsehoods. They say that it is because such a statement would be accepted by the Inquiry and hence the PHL would be blamed for their action. It is unlikely that they will stop Narang as he is certain that his statement is true.

Work being stepped up on blood risks.

Apparently there is now a feeling that the UK doctors may be asked to stop using blood so readily and that this will cause newspaper panic buttons to be hit. Hence the work looking for other ways around it. It seems that the medical side is being brought into the science for the first time and PH virologists may be involved.

MAFF records show determination to avoid panic of BSE even before any advice was available indicating whether panic would have been valid.

It seems that the Phillips Inquiry may have gone into MAFF really very quickly and dragged out all the documents that would be of significance concerning the handling of BSE by MAFF early in the epidemic. What came out was that MAFF were advising its ministers to give some information to the public but to tell them that BSE was of minor significance....even though they did not know whether or not it really was of severe significance. i.e. they were advising action as if BSE was not of risk to humans and in these advice documents they indicate that this was because of the damage that it might do to the UK beef industry and to UK exports.

UK determined to take minor action concerning exported plasma products.

It seems that the UK has not advised foreign Governments that its plasma products may be unsafe and so should be taken off the market (as is to happen in the UK in September this year). I have been contacted by foreign groups that have not been advised about this.

May 1998

Possible nvCJD in USA.

This was reported in UPI as a report from Rochester on May 27th. A case of 'mad cow' disease in a daughter of a couple that took a long time to diagnose the condition. Apparently samples of the daughter's brain are with BSE researchers now.

Teresa Gorman (MP) at the Phillips Inquiry.

She came into the audience when Mark Purdey was being interviewed and was surrounded by an entourage of journalists. She decided to sit in the second row because this would not mean that she was creating a fuss. In fact someone came and sat in front of her and was asked to leave. Tom King (MP for Purdey and had actually sent a car once to the farm to get him from parliament) was also there.

A canadian haemophilia spokesman Tom Smith has called for all UK donors of blood to be stopped in Canada.

This would seem impossible to the Canadian Red Cross that organises a lot of it as it would stop 40 percent of the donors. Last autumn the RC alerted hospitals that about 200,000 vials of blood products given to about 50,000 people could pose a risk of triggering CJD.

Public Health in the UK likely to take on CJD work.

Now it seems as if the medical side is going to be taking back some of the work that they were banned from doing during the last government.

John Middleton, father of nvCJD case is to sign copies of his book.

This would be on 28th May, (thursday), at Waterstones, High Ousegate, York. 0114 244 3545.

Narang being called to give his information on 1st June.

Apparently they are wanting to get his data out fairly quickly and he will be there with his lawyers (which the Inquiry is paying for). This is likely to produce heavy results in that Narang has a lot of information that suggests that 'experts' are possibly not such experts.

Did you know who was in charge of ADAS before it crumbled?

Meldrum.

The worries about UK blood donors being banned in Europe have appeared.

It seems that this has been considered widely in Europe and no decision has yet been reached. The idea is that they will wait until the UK is out of the chairmanship of the EC before making their plan known.

There may well be drugs available that can prevent TSE infection taking place.

Apparently research is extremely slow in this area and certain workers have not got any money for it at all.

Lord Justice Phillips

the hero of the inquiry is due to be 60 this week according to the stories (not Pattison as was previously thought). He got on his motorbike outside the inquiry and drove away.

It now seems that the research field for BSE is going to try much harder.

The stories seem to indicate that it wont be the wooden men of officialdom that are going to be deciding which research is backed as it seems that the applicants are turning out to be the men with the ideas. Now, nothing annoys wooden men more than bright sparks...

The Phillips Inquiry shows the determination by the feeders and renderers that it was not their fault.

They have put up various arguments that indicate that they simplyl did not cause the epidemic, and anything they did do was because they were told to. The arrows are being pointed back to MAFF but nobody looks to be finding any true culprits.

April

In 27-29th April in Ireland: meeting concerning the incineration of bovine products.

The gossip is that the same group in Europe are going around indicating how all this should be done to all the Governments. They say that the group are doing this on a commercial basis.

Controversy about incinerated material.

"infection by the respiratory route does not occur", "venereal infection does not occur", says Paul Brown. 'not easily transmissible'. At the moment the people that might be inhaling the dust from the incinerators are not happy with him as the MAFF seem to be pleased with his statements. Nobody seems to understand how he can make the statements about infection not taking place via the respiratory route because generally it was not present in the air and calls have been made for research to be carried out.

Attempts were made to prevent the BSE Inquiry.

It seems that scientific people high up in the Civil Service were not happy about it being a separate judicial inquiry and would have much rather that it all happened through one of their tame committees.

Rufforth incinerator is not given permission by York council.

It also seems that they are not to take the decision to an appeal but rather to look for somewhere else to build the incinerator.

Chickens may have been carrying BSE.

This seems to have come through in advance of a paper in Nature indicating that, although an animal is not actually infected by some strains of TSE (e.g. chickens not infected by BSE) they may actually store the agent in their spleen and brain. Full information when article comes out.

Blood transfusion risks are going to be announced.

It seems that the possibility of transfer of nvCJD by blood is going to have to be announced by the Government fairly soon and people are pacing around wondering how to handle this one as the media are bound to pick it up quickly. Prophylactic use of drugs is being discussed (pentosan) and this will be looked on a possibility to get past the problem in the short term.

The number of hypotheses as to the origin of BSE are building up.

This appeared initially on the hypothesis page but it was not until a few more appeared that it became clear that many more ideas were out there. The Phillips Inquiry seem to be interested in many more ideas than just the ones from MAFF for instance.

The European Community Research funding concerning BSE is not being all used.

This simply seems odd when perfectly good applications for funding are being made. One of the problems is that only the UK and Ireland seems to be particularly determined to find cases of BSE and applications that are designed to look for more in other countries are not exactly welcome. It now seems that some of the funding that was not allocated is simply being put forward to the next year. Internal contacts suggest that things are not looking bright for anyone that wants to find out news that might be particularly unhappy in this respect.

Researchers are worried that they may find all bovine tissues infective with BSE.

It is now becoming clear that mice are at least 100 times less sensitive to BSE than other cows. Worries are now appearing that the true figure may be 100,000. The figure put out by mistake in a lecture by the MAFF was 10,000 but things may actually be worse than this. Because of this, the inoculation of all tissues from cattle into calves (from New Zealand) may actually show that all tissues are infective to some degree and these experiments, demanded by SEAC are on the way now. The question is really; what will it mean if we find that all the tissues are infective? Wont it just be too late?

It now seems that the work from Hamilton, Montana on potential methods of treatment will be out soon.

This seems to be from a series of chemicals that the author's dad made and it seems to be much more useful than previous findings.

It now seems that the EC will repeal a decision to ban bovine products.

This was the 97/534 decision which included the importation of the products from abroad, and the use of the products for things that could not possibly be a risk to humans. Anyway, there was such a problem from Australia, New Zealand (which has done well from BSE), and USA that they ahve decided to simply take it away...but replace it with another less agressive bill, probably coming in July. Then again the trade partners want to be omittd from it until Jan 1999.

One of the nvCJD relatives has been to the USA and discussed the subject with many people.

This cannot come out with them being pleased with UK beef and agricultural actions.

York incinerator likely to go ahead.

It seems that now the incinerator (a mobile one) is likely to get the OK at Rufforth and the locals have fought it for some time. This does not fit with the Department of Trade and Industry's statement that local incinerators for MBM were not likely to be needed as powerstations were to be used.

Further worry is on the way concerning blood products.

Gossip indicating that many examples of UK plasma products are going to be taken from the pharmacies may appear and that some may actually be withdrawn for good. Exactly how this is known is unclear.

Experiments with cattle at CVL and Stratford.

These seem to be the experiments that should have been carried out in 1987 and exactly what experiments that are new and different are unclear. Blood product experiments are almost bound to be part of this and hence a calculation of the level of risk that has already been taken in the UK. What is not at all clear is what can be done if they find that the risk already taken is high as I can find no data indicating that treatment experiments are being carried out also.

In SEAC's report of 9.3.98 it seems that muscle cells can produce PrP

. This seems to be only in transgenic animals that have been given PrP genes (which may therefore not be under the control of the standard cellular mechanisms). The report also made it clear that Collinge's lab is going to do very well from the glycoform testing of numerous cases of scrapie in sheep and goats that may appear. The aim would be to see if they had BSE really.

Apparently the Phillips Inquiry did not hear the explanation of Dealler's under reporting data.

Also there has been no response from MAFF with their usual knee jerk denial. So, it looks as if the data will have to go to further scientific publishing before they are considered further. The only problem, as Dealler told to Phillips, is that journals have few people to come to as referees before publication...only MAFF and Anderson's crew in Oxford!

March 1998

Much annoyance about Dealler's under reporting figures.

Apparently there was much gnashing of teeth at the MAFF about Dealler's data, which they had not calculated themselves and had were patting themselves on their backs about BSE going away. In fact Dealler simply wanted to show the Inquiry just how MAFF did not do the calculations and did not give such figures to SEAC. He described it as 'wilfull ignorance'. In fact the accuracy of the data cannot be looked on as perfect but does indicate that either cattle are dying younger with BSE or fewer are being reported.

York major meeting on risks from blood products through nvCJD.

This should take place in June and may end up taking the most important place in getting information through to the Public Health doctors in the UK. In 1996 the same organiser produced a meeting for PH people about BSE. For the first time the PH was informed of what was going on and the place was packed with delegates. In fact it was the first meeting since BSE had started where government and non-government workers had a sensible open medical discussion about human PH risk. This may be the same sort of thing with blood transfusion and the PH workers are not going to be happy about the way they have been kept in the dark.

MBM of rendered OTMS cattle is not getting burnt in large enough amounts

The organisation of its burning was originally to have been in local plants, many of which did not get going because of local argument with councils. Also the burning in powerstations was to be the answer but the power companies found that their staff did not like the idea and it might damage the equipment. Then an old coal power stations could be got going. But still it seems that we are producing MBM at such a rate that only half is being disposed of. Stories fly around of it disappearing into holes in the ground and Cunningham backing this up as valid disposal.

More worry appearing about UK beef safety.

The appearance of transgenic mouse testing of UK beef may turn out to have severe consequences. For a long time this was not possible, mainly because Prusiner's group method of carrying out was not adequate but it now seems that it is coming on line and UK no longer has a monopoly on the animals with disease to test.

Far more cases of BSE are present in Portugal than are in official statistics.

This is in fact not denied by the Portuguese Government. I am told that only 1 in 10 clinical cases are reaching the statistics (not a deliberate coverup). The reason is supposed to be the numerous exports of cattle from the UK to Portugal and the usage of MBM for feed meal from the UK.

Major admissions are now taking place that UK is buying plasma and plasma products from mainly USA.

There is, however no good market to buy plasma from, and in the past we paid the National Blood Authority groups some money for the plasma that was taken. This is, however much less than the amount that will have to be paid from the USA. As a result it is not really clear that it would not be simply cheaper to import the plasma products...but the products may not be as safe. All a complex issue, but replaces the denials that were taking place in January.

Lacey's announcement that there are more cases of BSE than are reported is being confirmed now by various groups.

This cannot be to the good of the MAFF, which seems to have convinced itself that this is not true. (i.e. has not tried to find out - ed)

Belgian case of CJD now felt by media to be a genuine nvCJD.

Full details have now been sent to the CJD Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh and information will come from them as to whether the symptoms of the case fit it well. It seems thatthe media in Belgium are about to bring the case out soon and are unwilling to put up with the Belgian official response.

Anderson's statement was statistically questioned by Phillips.

It was clear that Phillips knew what sort of questions to ask in that when Anderson claimed to be able to show that the MBM ban was not working back in 1990, Phillips simply said that this could not be done as by that time there were no retrospective calculations possible. It was not clear that Anderson agreed taht this was so (although it is correct Ed) and went on to make a number of errors about the dates of SOB and MBM bans. Still, the most important thing that came out was that he was not permitted access to the data and described this as a sort of 'culture of secrecy'. See www.bse.org.uk

Barbara and Flannagan announce that UK blood is safe.

This was towards the end of the editorial in the BMJ indicating that UK plasma may well not be safe. This looks remarkably like they had been pressed by higher figures and reminds a number of people in the field of the similar announcements by the MAFF concerning beef. B and F are, however a very realistic pair and know what is really going on.

Anderson announces that he asked MAFF for figures on BSE and was denied them repeatedly.

This does ot surprise me as Dealler had done exactly the same thing and was similarly denied. Anderson also says that this was unacceptable as the staff at CVL could not carry out the investigation of the epidemiology that was needed and if they had done then large numbers of cases could have been avoided.

Further information suggests that many bovine tissues really are not infective to any great degree.

This follows the inoculation of the tissues directly into calves and waiting for several years. So far nothing has come from meat for instance but they say that this has only been going for 2 (?) years for many tissues.

Information from foreign countries that UK blood donors may not be accepted.

This is not really surprising but may lead to a political problem. So far the UK Government have said nothing about it and nothing was said at a large meeting in London (9-11 March) concerning pharmaceutical products (including blood!) from all over the world.

The Committee on the Safety of Medicines are not giving a kind eye to the plasma products.

Apparently each plasma product is being investigated one by one and each being decided as to its advantages and disadvantages. What seems to have happend is that they are deciding that any UK plasma products (using UK plasma) is unacceptable unless there is no replacement.

SEAC being asked about potential risk from surgical instruments.

By rights surgical instruments dealing with somebody with CJD are discarded and incinerated. Well, if one in 400 surgical patients are incubating CJD this may be difficult. SEAC seem to be coming back with information about this as well and the UK Government is getting ready for it.

Further difficulty in publication of nvCJD Public Health work.

It seems that the UK Department of Health has realised that there may be an unacceptable risk in UK blood products only since around the middle of 1997 and only got on to doing risk analyses by Chrismas. The PH people have of course realised that much of the risk has already been taken with BSE and that risk is has been taken for several years concerning blood products. So, it has been suggested that the DofH has kept the PH articles unpublished until later this year.

Replacement blood products may be on the way.

The UK Government is having a problem and there can be little to argue about this. At the moment they are looking at various ways to replace blood and its products in the most effective way. This has still not really got out through the press but actually shows that the Department of Health is doing things properly. Still nothing has come through about when the Doctors in the UK are going to get the story as a letter from the Cheif Medical Officer.

Information appears that the pharmaceutical industry was banning various UK bovine products while they were OK for eating.

It seems that various bovine parts that were not banned as SBO in 1989 in UK were being removed from manufacturing processes at that time and that it was the UK Government that was suggesting it to the industry. For instance the insulin industry stopped using bovine (UK) pancreas and went into using foreign derived ones. They were just about crushed by the 1996 announcement of nvCJD but in fact they had taken action about 7 years earlier. The real question is why the UK Government decided to recommend this and yet it was OK for the population to eat the products.

It seems that various places were going to ban UK blood before nvCJD was announced.

This was realy quite surprising as the UK government had convinced itself that there was no risk and was spending some time telling everyone else that there was no risk. I have been asked not to release the names of the countries.

Horror from the pharmaceutical industry over EU 97/534.

This was the regulation that said that no specific risk materials from animals that might be infected with BSE should be used for manufacture. If anything was to be used ti had to be shown not to be a risk. This was terribly difficult of course and the companies were screaming. It might come out all right in the end I suspect but 200 delegates paid 1300 pounds to come to a meeting in London just to talk about this.

Now evidence appears that two of the cases of CJD may have been nvCJD.

These were two cases that died in 1994 one was age 34 and the other 36. They lived near to each other near to Antwerp. The 34 year old got a post mortem but the other was diagnosed clinically. Originally the pathologist said that the sample of the brain of the 34 yr old was sent to Austria (this has now been checked and is not true) it was then claimed to have gone to Edinburgh (also now found not to be true). The investigation is going to be followed up by the media I suspect.

Possibly 3 cases of nvCJD in Belgium.

I have been contacted suggesting that there may be 2 or 3 cases that are being investigated in Antwerp etc. No further data yet.

NW Water, soon to be in charge of some land says it is dangerous to farm.

The exact reason they are giving is unclear at the moment but they are telling the farmers taht growing things on the sites is too dangerous because of infections in the land. Apparently it is because of animals buried there. ? BSE....not at all clear that this is not just an attempt to make more money.

New web site of the BSE Inquiry:

www.bse.org.uk. Dont forget to see the information arriving on the internet site.

BSE meeting involved with pharmaceutical industry (at 1300 pounds per person) has been grossly over subscribed.

It seems that the money was simply not the problem but rather the difficulties that are being introduced by the EC and its new regulations on what the pharmaceuticals must do with their products to avoid any risk from BSE. Heavy stuff I expect but this is the first time that the industry has turned out in such numbers. The lecture last year was under attended and the industry basically said it was not going to take part in looking for treatment or diagnosis for nvCJD. Things may have changed. Details of the meeting are in the meetings section (but dont bother to come as it will be full).

Lacey is expected to bring out serious MAFF errors in Phillips Inquiry.

Exactly what this means is unsure but it is certain that he has large amounts of evidence that is still present in paper form as letters from many officials thoughout the BSE epidemic. Much of this now turns out to be wrong and misleading. Indeed some of it may have been deliberately misleading. He is due to speak fairly early in the Inquiry and the press will be waiting.

SEAC's new members are moving in...but some unknown.

One of them is a legal lecturer from Guildford College and is being a person on the side of the consumer. She is likely to throw the cat among the pigeons really very fast and the Consumer Assn have realised that she will play her cards when needed.

Worries are appearing that the document being prepared by the DofH to tell doctors how to use blood sparingly will create horror stories within the press.

Haematologists are realising that if the plasma products were no acceptable as being safe then clearly a percentage of blood transfusions may not be either. It is probably this worry that is seeping through to the press rather than any solid data.

Assessment of risk from BSE still based on MAFF advice.

This came from the pharmaceutical industry's assessment of whether or not they should do something about BSE in their products. They decided that there was so little risk that they would be doing things just to make everyone feel better but for little actual value. They refused to accept the German Government's risk calculations (although they liked the methods) because it used levels of infectivity in bovine tissues that were too high. Well, in fact these were the levels that MAFF told to everyone else and were spread around by them. In fact the levels used by the Germans were correct. (it is not clear who is passing this data to the pharmaceutical industry this was in the USA - but they may not realise that is is incorrect - Ed).

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