8 MAY-9 JUN
2000
Document Directory
09 Jun 00 - CJD -
Scientists launch telling debate on CJD
04
Jun 00 - CJD - Fears for baby of CJD mother
10
May 00 - CJD - Scientist at Oxford quits after sex slur
10
May 00 - CJD - French pate and sausage hit by BSE rule
08
May 00 - CJD - Finding the lost sheep and goats
08
May 00 - CJD - New BSE fears raised
09 Jun 00 - CJD - Scientists launch telling
debate on CJD
James Meikle
Guardian ... Friday 9 June 2000
Scientists
are preparing to launch a national debate
on whether people infected
with the human form of BSE without their knowledge should be told
they have the incurable disease.
Government advisers say ethical decisions will
have to be made before the introduction of blood tests
which may detect signs of the fatal condition before victims display symptoms.
Counsellors
have helped some women who wished to be told whether surgical instruments used in
caesarian operations had been used on a mother who developed variant CJD,
as the condition is known. So far 60
people are believed to have died and 11
others probably have the disease.
Tests are considered a high priority for people
such as potential blood donors. Early evidence of the disease, for which cures are far
away, would have a devastating impact on families as well as having legal and employment
consequences.
04 Jun 00 - CJD - Fears for baby of CJD mother
Staff Reporter
Sunday Times ... Sunday 4 June 2000
A
woman who became ill with variant CJD while pregnant
has died
- leaving behind the mystery
of whether she has passed the disease to her child
, writes Jonathan Leake.
The 24-year-old Midlands woman, who had worked in catering,
died last week. She had contracted pneumonia after becoming bedridden.
This weekend the
dead woman's family gathered at their home near Nottingham in preparation for the funeral
early this week. Her daughter, now seven months old and suffering from a degenerative
brain disease
, is being cared for by her maternal grandparents. Neither the baby nor her family can
be identified for legal reasons.
The woman's mother spoke yesterday of her anger
at her daughter's death
, which she blamed on the "greed of the agricultural industry and the
incompetence of officials and ministers in the last Conservative government
". She has started a compensation claim
on behalf of the child.
Doctors have spent the past few days conducting tests on
the dead woman for any link to her child's illness. All that can be said with certainty is
that the baby's symptoms have similarities to those found in variant CJD
.
Doctors have not, however, been able to find any sign of the so-called prion
protein particles that are widely believed to be the cause of variant CJD.
If
the investigation finds she was infected by her mother, it would mean generations of
children as yet unborn could be affected. There is evidence that prion disease can
transmit from mother to offspring
in sheep and cattle.
10 May 00 - CJD - Scientist at Oxford quits
after sex slur
By Sally Pook
Telegraph ... Monday 10 May 2000
One
of Britain's most distinguished scientists has resigned from Oxford University four months
after being suspended for suggesting that a female scientist had gained her post by
sleeping with a professor.
(UK Editor's note: Professors Anderson was noted for
his work on nvCJD but was unwilling to toe the MAFF line. His
departurefrom his job, like Professor Lacey's many years ago, was almost certainly MAFF
initiated.)
Roy Anderson, who advised the Government on BSE and Aids, has already resigned
as director of a research centre at the university after two inquiries criticised its
management and financial affairs. He gave notice to the university yesterday after telling
colleagues in the department of zoology that he was taking a chair at Imperial College,
London, in infectious diseases and epidemiology at its school of medicine. In a statement
through the college, he said he was delighted.
Prof Anderson was suspended in January
after allegedly suggesting that his colleague, Sunetra Gupta, had an affair with the head
of the zoology department. Oxford reinstated him as Linacre Professor of Zoology after he
apologised in writing to those concerned. But senior faculty members called for him to be
banned from sitting on selection panels.
Dr Gupta, a reader in epidemiology,
consulted lawyers and still wants a published apology.
10 May 00 - CJD - French pate and sausage hit
by BSE rule
By John Lichfield in Paris
Independent ...
Monday 10 May 2000
French gastronomes are up in arms over tougher new rules to
protect consumers from bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE) which could outlaw
certain kinds of traditional sausages
and pate
.
The independent French food safety agency Afssa, which inspired the unilateral
French ban on British beef imports, has recommended that the intestines of cows
slaughtered in France should be destroyed and removed from the food chain.
Small
and large cow intestines
are used to encase
some kinds of charcuterie, or cooked sausages. They are also a traditional
ingredient
of pâté
or potted meat called rillettes
.
The food safety agency has told the government that cow intestines carry a high
risk
of transmission of BSE in its human variant, Creutzfeldt Jakob's disease (CJD).
It has recommended that the intestines removed from all French cows that were born before
March 1998 - 51,000 tons of meat a year - should be destroyed
.
The recommendation, made three months ago but not yet implemented
by the government, has caused indignation in the charcuterie industry.
Most
French cooked meat products are made from pork. But certain types - andouilles
, andouillettes
, saucisse de Morteau
and the jésus de Lyon
, as well as rillettes
- rely on cow guts
. Outlawing their use would destroy recipes and traditions which go back for centuries,
the industry complains. Artificial, plastic, sausage cases are available but they alter
the taste of the finished product.
An agriculture ministry official threw oil on the
flames by telling the press: "France can live without rillettes
and andouilles
[sausages]." An indignant spokesman for the charcuterie industry said that this
remark "demonstrated the ignorance of the technocrats who make such decisions".
The
outcome of the row will be watched very closely by British officials. When the food safety
agency are recommended a continuing ban on British beef imports, in defiance of the
European Union law, the French government said that it had no choice but to accept the
decision - the principle of extreme precaution in protecting human health must prevail.
08 May 00 - CJD - Finding the lost sheep and
goats
Kablenet
Kablenet News ... Monday 08 May 2000
The
Ministry of Agriculture is looking forward to the day when every sheep and goat
in England will have an electronic tag
The Ministry of Agriculture is telling farmers in England that they will soon
have to be able to identify every sheep and goat -- from birth -- on their farms. Not
electronically yet, but the ministry is warning that such an option is not far off
.
In the wake of the UK's 10-year-old mad cow disaster, every
cow and bull now has an electronic "passport", by which the ministry can follow
them through their lives -- and identify their parents and offspring. But cows are large
and hard to move. Sheep and lambs tend to roam the moors and downs in their thousands.
The
Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is in the final stages of a consultation on
the proposal, which started with a European directive. It has decided to back off a
suggestion that every animal should be individually identified from birth but wants "any
system" to have "a capacity to develop" in that way "if it were
subsequently thought desirable".
The ministry says that it wants "to consider
electronic identification for sheep and goats
" and states that "in the longer term this must be the way forward
". The EU is trying out methods of electronic identification and the ministry is
waiting to take them into account. But MAFF covers only England: Wales, Scotland and
Northern Ireland -- also subject to the EU directive -- might choose different solutions
08 May 00 - CJD - New BSE fears raised
Staff Reporter
Independent ... Monday 08 May 2000
The
BSE epidemic may last longer than previously thought because of a "real risk"
that the disease was spread by cow pats
from infected cattle
, a leading scientist has said.
BSE expert Dr Alan Dickenson told Radio Four's
Farming Today programme that his research suggested cattle continued to catch BSE long
after
the date the Government believed was possible.
The new findings sparked fears
that Britain was risking another trade war
with France and Germany over the spread of the disease.
Microbiologist Dr
Stephen Dealler told the programme that unless urgent action was taken to curb the spread
of the disease, the French and Germans would impose new restrictions
on British beef.
The Government has insisted that the last cattle were
infected in August 1996
, either through contaminated feed or, in a small number of cases, from mother to calf.
But
Dr Dickenson, the founding director of the Neuropathogenisis Unit in Edinburgh which
researches BSE, warned that animals born after August 1996 may have caught the disease a "third
way"
, through infected soil
.
His research shows that cow pats excreted on to grazing land by cattle at the
height of the epidemic posed a "real risk"
of infection.
If cattle born after August 1996 caught BSE through infected soil,
the epidemic would last longer than the Government predicted.
The disease's
five-year incubation period means it will not be possible to tell whether Dr Dickenson is
right until 2001
.
Dr Dealler said he feared France and Germany would extend their bans
on the import of British beef unless the Government takes action
to stop the spread of the disease.
He added that the future spread of BSE could
be "drastically reduced" if cattle and sheep were injected with the drug
pentosan polysulphate.
The compound, used in the United States to treat cystitis,
has been shown to drastically reduce BSE infectivity in laboratory mice, Dr Dealler said.