No more bull – avian flu and mad cow exposed
by Howard Lyman
R
ecent studies of Alzheimer victims’ brains show that a shocking 5.5 to 13 percent of these individuals actually died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. This is a serious and dangerous misdiagnosis with huge implications. Now we need to know how much of that CJD is the new variant type caused by mad cow disease. Our governments claim that only one in a million people will be affected by CJD, yet, with more than five million cases of Alzheimer’s in North America, the studies, so far, tell a very different story. We need to remember that whether it is mad cow or bird flu, we are only one mutation away from a worldwide pandemic, and that factory farming and humans’ desire to eat meat constitute the root causes. Today, millions of humans could be incubating the brain-wasting disease vCJD, and it could take anywhere from 10 to 40 years before symptoms appear; symptoms very similar to Alzheimer’s, and also 100 percent fatal. CJD is caused by a protein crystal structure called a prion, while influenza is cause by a virus. Health officials warn that when, not if, the avian flu is transmitted from human to human, we could see half, or about 3.5 billion humans, die from this virulent strain. Just think of half of the houses empty, half of the cars parked and half of the classrooms empty. This is a real possibility. In the last 100 years, we have seen more than 144 different strains of
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influenza worldwide. There are two forms: the first circulates in wild fowl at low levels that causes little problem to humans. The second is a highly pathogenic avian influenza that is rare in wild birds, but which causes massive domestic poultry deaths. Many news reports would have you believe that wild birds are spreading the latest form of avian flu H5N1. The truth is that factory-farming confinement operations are the breeding grounds for the mutations of this deadly threat. Growing up in Montana, I thought tending the soil was like being in the Garden of Eden. We had birds, trees and fertile soil on our organic farm. Later, when I attended Montana State University, I was educated as a chemical junkie. I was taught better living through chemistry and bought this view of the
future hook, line and sinker. Armed with this mindset, I returned to the family farm and built a factory farm that operated on the model I was taught at Montana State University. I paid little attention to the environ-
of the future. Feeding dead animal waste to planteating cows was like robbing the bank with the help of the sheriff. We never gave a thought to the health of the animals, as long as they made it to slaugh-
We need to remember that whether it is mad cow or bird flu, we are only one mutation away from a worldwide pandemic, and that factory farming and humans’ desire to eat meat constitute the root causes. ment and even less to what we fed the animals. If it was cheap and the animals would eat it, and at the same time gain weight, I thought it was the way
ter. The idea that turning cows into cannibals could come back to haunt us was the furthest thought from our minds.
A YearOn
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MAY 2006
Carolyn Herriot CommonGround
