(Robert H Ruskin) writes:
>Besides being a microbiologist, I am also an environmental scientist. I
>currently subscribe to sci.environment and there was a post there that
>was of some interest to me, the microbiologist on BSE. A person wrote that
>BSE may not in fact be caused by prions, but rather from organo-phosphate
>pesticides that the British seem to literally dump over their cattle to
>ward off some fly.
-snip-
>Until the British open up access of the cows to researchers, it will
>never be conclusively proven whether the problem is due in fact to a prion,
>or a Silent Spring.
Work with transgenic mice which lack normal prion and apparently can't be
infected by brain grafts from normal, infected mice strongly suggests the
problem is not organo-pesticides but is prion related. Given the widespread
use of organo-pesticides on all sorts of crops, if that were the link to CJD
I'd expect lots more cases...
Bill (still eating beef, but not voting Tory).
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Bill Burnett - bbur at wpo.nerc.ac.uk | Not so much the slow
Scottish Association for Marine Science | lane as the hard shoulder...
P.O. Box 3, Oban, Argyll PA34 4AD, UK |
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