This is bizarre! Evidently, Hoof and Mouth disease isn't even deadly. It appears the Europeans (and the rest of the world) are vastly over reacting...especially when one considers how they have under-reacting to Mad Cow, a truly deadly, human-endangering disease. What is going on with all this killing off of Cows, Sheep and Pigs?
56 cases confirmed in the plague that never was
Foot and mouth should not be a crisis. We have all been misled by the men from the ministry
By Geoffrey Lean
4 March 2001
This weekend as funeral pyres light up the night sky and barriers go up all over Britain's broad acres farming and the countryside face their biggest crisis, and their greatest opportunity, since the Second World War.
56 cases confirmed in the plague that never was
Foot and mouth should not be a crisis. We have all been misled by the men from the ministry
By Geoffrey Lean
4 March 2001
This weekend as funeral pyres light up the night sky and barriers go up all over Britain's broad acres farming and the countryside face their biggest crisis, and their greatest opportunity, since the Second World War.
Yet despite the draconian measures foot and mouth is a mild disease, from which animals recover naturally and quickly. It has only been turned into a disaster by the heedless intensification of agriculture over the past 50 years.
By today - after confirmation of three new cases, one in Devon and two in Tyne and Wear - 56 herds had caught the disease. Yesterday saw the largest rise in cases in a single day, with 45,000 cows, sheep and pigs had been slaughtered to try to stop it spreading. And Britain had a Keep Out countryside. Every footpath in every national park is closed, as are all but 20 of the National Trust's properties, and all two-and-a-half million acres of the Forestry Commission's land.
Fixtures from the Wales v Ireland rugby match to Crufts have been cancelled. The farming industry, already on its knees, is staring into the abyss and neighbouring nations wait with fear and fury mixed to see how they will be affected. The crisis has severely shaken Tony Blair, and, as senior ministers confirmed yesterday, forced him to abandon his plans to announce the General Election for 5 April immediately after Wednesday's Budget.
The disease's escalating effects, the draconian control measures and the unanimously sombre tone of commentators, all suggest that the country must be facing a devastating killer plague.
But we aren't. Foot and mouth disease only very rarely affects people, and even then only raises a slight temperature and a few blisters. It doesn't even kill animals.
As the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) itself admits, the sheep, pigs and cows being slaughtered and burned would shake it off in two or three weeks if they were allowed to live. Vets say that it is no more serious for animals than a bad cold for humans.
Instead, it is an economic disease. When animals are sick they produce less milk, and put on less meat. MAFF asserts that cows also milk less well when they recover, though late last week could produce no scientific evidence to prove it.
Yet MAFF steadfastly refuses to countenance any relaxation of its zero tolerance policy. This contrasts sharply with the enormous tolerance it showed BSE, allowing hundreds of thousands of diseased animals into the food chain and permitting controls when introduced to be poorly enforced and widely flouted.
Yet BSE really is a terrifying plague which has killed 80 people, slowly and horrifically, and will do the same to thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, more over coming decades.
MAFF's reaction to the two diseases shows where its priorities lie. It cares little for human health. It is not even particularly bothered about sick animals. What gets it exercised, and spurs it to emergency action, is a threat to the profitability of agribusiness.
In a sane world, the economic losses caused by this mild disease would not matter much: farmers would accept and adjust to them, as to the fluctuations of their harvests. But the crazy overintensification of agriculture, with margins pared to the bone to produce cheap food against foreign competition, means it simply cannot afford them.
Britain pioneered the intensification on this side of the Atlantic. No European country has pursued it so relentlessly, or has so ruthlessly driven small farmers to the wall to benefit richer ones: more than 330,000 farms two-thirds of the total have been forced out of business since 1945.
Abigail Woods a vet who is researching the history of foot and mouth at Manchester University, financed by the Wellcome Trust adds that it was Britain, too, that pioneered the zero tolerance policy to foot and mouth, originally to protect a few wealthy stockbreeders, and was the first country to ban imports from countries with the disease.
Now, hoist with its own petard, MAFF has no alternative but to continue the slaughter to stop British meat being excluded from export markets that have followed our lead. Intensification may not be to blame for the outbreak of the disease, but it has turned it into a crisis affecting the highest in the land.
Mr Blair who on Tuesday makes his second green speech in less than six months after more than three years of silence told a private Downing Street meeting of environmentalists and businessmen on Thursday that the floods, the collapse of agriculture and the latest scientific predictions on the effects of global warming (reported in the Independent on Sunday last month) showed we were now reaping the harvest of past neglect.
All this may be providing a catalyst for change. Tony Blair has called for a national debate on the future of agriculture. Ministers accept that policies of the past decades have failed and are cautiously moving towards a radical shift from intensifying agriculture to preserving the environment as the basis of sound farming.
They want to switch the bulk of the massive subsidies given to agriculture from intensifying production to conserving and managing the countryside. And they say that the foot and mouth emergency is speeding up the process.
They face two obstacles. The first is the European Union, which, led by France and Germany, has resisted change. But Germany appointed a new Green agriculture minister in the crisis that followed the discovery of BSE in the country. She has indicated that Germany will join the campaign for reform. If it does, ministers believe they could muster the votes to push it through.
The second, much more formidable obstacle is MAFF, which is responsible for the mess in the first place and has lost none of its conservatism or obscurantism.
It must be allowed to obstruct no more. When the last glows of the burnt carcasses have died away, ministers must build one more pyre for MAFF itself, and the whole misguided set of entrenched interests it represents.
56 cases confirmed in the plague that never was
Foot and mouth should not be a crisis. We have all been misled by the men from the ministry
By Geoffrey Lean
4 March 2001
This weekend as funeral pyres light up the night sky and barriers go up all over Britain's broad acres farming and the countryside face their biggest crisis, and their greatest opportunity, since the Second World War.
Yet despite the draconian measures foot and mouth is a mild disease, from which animals recover naturally and quickly. It has only been turned into a disaster by the heedless intensification of agriculture over the past 50 years.
By today - after confirmation of three new cases, one in Devon and two in Tyne and Wear - 56 herds had caught the disease. Yesterday saw the largest rise in cases in a single day, with 45,000 cows, sheep and pigs had been slaughtered to try to stop it spreading. And Britain had a Keep Out countryside. Every footpath in every national park is closed, as are all but 20 of the National Trust's properties, and all two-and-a-half million acres of the Forestry Commission's land.
Fixtures from the Wales v Ireland rugby match to Crufts have been cancelled. The farming industry, already on its knees, is staring into the abyss and neighbouring nations wait with fear and fury mixed to see how they will be affected. The crisis has severely shaken Tony Blair, and, as senior ministers confirmed yesterday, forced him to abandon his plans to announce the General Election for 5 April immediately after Wednesday's Budget.
The disease's escalating effects, the draconian control measures and the unanimously sombre tone of commentators, all suggest that the country must be facing a devastating killer plague.
But we aren't. Foot and mouth disease only very rarely affects people, and even then only raises a slight temperature and a few blisters. It doesn't even kill animals.
As the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) itself admits, the sheep, pigs and cows being slaughtered and burned would shake it off in two or three weeks if they were allowed to live. Vets say that it is no more serious for animals than a bad cold for humans.
Instead, it is an economic disease. When animals are sick they produce less milk, and put on less meat. MAFF asserts that cows also milk less well when they recover, though late last week could produce no scientific evidence to prove it.
Yet MAFF steadfastly refuses to countenance any relaxation of its zero tolerance policy. This contrasts sharply with the enormous tolerance it showed BSE, allowing hundreds of thousands of diseased animals into the food chain and permitting controls when introduced to be poorly enforced and widely flouted.
Yet BSE really is a terrifying plague which has killed 80 people, slowly and horrifically, and will do the same to thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, more over coming decades.
MAFF's reaction to the two diseases shows where its priorities lie. It cares little for human health. It is not even particularly bothered about sick animals. What gets it exercised, and spurs it to emergency action, is a threat to the profitability of agribusiness.
In a sane world, the economic losses caused by this mild disease would not matter much: farmers would accept and adjust to them, as to the fluctuations of their harvests. But the crazy overintensification of agriculture, with margins pared to the bone to produce cheap food against foreign competition, means it simply cannot afford them.
Britain pioneered the intensification on this side of the Atlantic. No European country has pursued it so relentlessly, or has so ruthlessly driven small farmers to the wall to benefit richer ones: more than 330,000 farms two-thirds of the total have been forced out of business since 1945.
Abigail Woods a vet who is researching the history of foot and mouth at Manchester University, financed by the Wellcome Trust adds that it was Britain, too, that pioneered the zero tolerance policy to foot and mouth, originally to protect a few wealthy stockbreeders, and was the first country to ban imports from countries with the disease.
Now, hoist with its own petard, MAFF has no alternative but to continue the slaughter to stop British meat being excluded from export markets that have followed our lead. Intensification may not be to blame for the outbreak of the disease, but it has turned it into a crisis affecting the highest in the land.
Mr Blair who on Tuesday makes his second green speech in less than six months after more than three years of silence told a private Downing Street meeting of environmentalists and businessmen on Thursday that the floods, the collapse of agriculture and the latest scientific predictions on the effects of global warming (reported in the Independent on Sunday last month) showed we were now reaping the harvest of past neglect.
All this may be providing a catalyst for change. Tony Blair has called for a national debate on the future of agriculture. Ministers accept that policies of the past decades have failed and are cautiously moving towards a radical shift from intensifying agriculture to preserving the environment as the basis of sound farming.
They want to switch the bulk of the massive subsidies given to agriculture from intensifying production to conserving and managing the countryside. And they say that the foot and mouth emergency is speeding up the process.
They face two obstacles. The first is the European Union, which, led by France and Germany, has resisted change. But Germany appointed a new Green agriculture minister in the crisis that followed the discovery of BSE in the country. She has indicated that Germany will join the campaign for reform. If it does, ministers believe they could muster the votes to push it through.
The second, much more formidable obstacle is MAFF, which is responsible for the mess in the first place and has lost none of its conservatism or obscurantism.
It must be allowed to obstruct no more. When the last glows of the burnt carcasses have died away, ministers must build one more pyre for MAFF itself, and the whole misguided set of entrenched interests it represents.
Yet despite the draconian measures foot and mouth is a mild disease, from which animals recover naturally and quickly. It has only been turned into a disaster by the heedless intensification of agriculture over the past 50 years.
By today - after confirmation of three new cases, one in Devon and two in Tyne and Wear - 56 herds had caught the disease. Yesterday saw the largest rise in cases in a single day, with 45,000 cows, sheep and pigs had been slaughtered to try to stop it spreading. And Britain had a Keep Out countryside. Every footpath in every national park is closed, as are all but 20 of the National Trust's properties, and all two-and-a-half million acres of the Forestry Commission's land.
Fixtures from the Wales v Ireland rugby match to Crufts have been cancelled. The farming industry, already on its knees, is staring into the abyss and neighbouring nations wait with fear and fury mixed to see how they will be affected. The crisis has severely shaken Tony Blair, and, as senior ministers confirmed yesterday, forced him to abandon his plans to announce the General Election for 5 April immediately after Wednesday's Budget.
The disease's escalating effects, the draconian control measures and the unanimously sombre tone of commentators, all suggest that the country must be facing a devastating killer plague.
But we aren't. Foot and mouth disease only very rarely affects people, and even then only raises a slight temperature and a few blisters. It doesn't even kill animals.
As the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) itself admits, the sheep, pigs and cows being slaughtered and burned would shake it off in two or three weeks if they were allowed to live. Vets say that it is no more serious for animals than a bad cold for humans.
Instead, it is an economic disease. When animals are sick they produce less milk, and put on less meat. MAFF asserts that cows also milk less well when they recover, though late last week could produce no scientific evidence to prove it.
Yet MAFF steadfastly refuses to countenance any relaxation of its zero tolerance policy. This contrasts sharply with the enormous tolerance it showed BSE, allowing hundreds of thousands of diseased animals into the food chain and permitting controls when introduced to be poorly enforced and widely flouted.
Yet BSE really is a terrifying plague which has killed 80 people, slowly and horrifically, and will do the same to thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, more over coming decades.
MAFF's reaction to the two diseases shows where its priorities lie. It cares little for human health. It is not even particularly bothered about sick animals. What gets it exercised, and spurs it to emergency action, is a threat to the profitability of agribusiness.
In a sane world, the economic losses caused by this mild disease would not matter much: farmers would accept and adjust to them, as to the fluctuations of their harvests. But the crazy overintensification of agriculture, with margins pared to the bone to produce cheap food against foreign competition, means it simply cannot afford them.
Britain pioneered the intensification on this side of the Atlantic. No European country has pursued it so relentlessly, or has so ruthlessly driven small farmers to the wall to benefit richer ones: more than 330,000 farms two-thirds of the total have been forced out of business since 1945.
Abigail Woods a vet who is researching the history of foot and mouth at Manchester University, financed by the Wellcome Trust adds that it was Britain, too, that pioneered the zero tolerance policy to foot and mouth, originally to protect a few wealthy stockbreeders, and was the first country to ban imports from countries with the disease.
Now, hoist with its own petard, MAFF has no alternative but to continue the slaughter to stop British meat being excluded from export markets that have followed our lead. Intensification may not be to blame for the outbreak of the disease, but it has turned it into a crisis affecting the highest in the land.
Mr Blair who on Tuesday makes his second green speech in less than six months after more than three years of silence told a private Downing Street meeting of environmentalists and businessmen on Thursday that the floods, the collapse of agriculture and the latest scientific predictions on the effects of global warming (reported in the Independent on Sunday last month) showed we were now reaping the harvest of past neglect.
All this may be providing a catalyst for change. Tony Blair has called for a national debate on the future of agriculture. Ministers accept that policies of the past decades have failed and are cautiously moving towards a radical shift from intensifying agriculture to preserving the environment as the basis of sound farming.
They want to switch the bulk of the massive subsidies given to agriculture from intensifying production to conserving and managing the countryside. And they say that the foot and mouth emergency is speeding up the process.
They face two obstacles. The first is the European Union, which, led by France and Germany, has resisted change. But Germany appointed a new Green agriculture minister in the crisis that followed the discovery of BSE in the country. She has indicated that Germany will join the campaign for reform. If it does, ministers believe they could muster the votes to push it through.
The second, much more formidable obstacle is MAFF, which is responsible for the mess in the first place and has lost none of its conservatism or obscurantism.
It must be allowed to obstruct no more. When the last glows of the burnt carcasses have died away, ministers must build one more pyre for MAFF itself, and the whole misguided set of entrenched interests it represents.
-- meg davis (meg9999@aol.com), March 05, 2001
Answers
Great article Meg! Add to this plague that never was: AIDS. Read
Peter Duesberg's book, Inventing the Aids Virus. Or read one
authored by a Brittish woman, Joan Shenton, Positively False. HIV is
not killing anyone (sort of like hoof and mouth), but look how we
have totally overreacted (treatment with AZT DOES KILL). We need to
seriously consider what the world health organization (WHO) has as
their underlying objective for humanity in general. Throw in the
FDA/USDA/NIH (national institute of health). They seem to all be in
this together. So now the world's delicate over-taxed food supply is
smashed and many will actually believe we would all have died of
"aids" anyway.
-- ken (n4wind@aol.com), March 06, 2001.
Hey Doc, I aint got no aids. Its all just a conspiracy.
06/03/2001 13:27 - (SA)
A doctor's hope: one day without HIV
Pretoria If only I could have one day in which I don't have to
diagnose a new patient HIV-positive, I would be happy.
Dr Mandlalele Mhinga sits in his consulting rooms across the road
from the Chris Hani-Baragwanth Hospital in Soweto. In front of his
rooms row upon row of mini bus taxis wait for passengers. It is a
surging, busy urban environment.
In Mhingas rooms patients come and go. Some stand talking, others
sit quietly, waiting for their turn, while posters on the wall
proclaim messages about diseases like diabetes, hepatitis, flu
vaccinations, acne and skin care.
And, of course, HIV/Aids. You cannot contract Aids through contact
with crockery and cutlery, by donating blood, by using a toilet,
through insect bites or by visiting other people, reads the message
on one poster. The disease is mainly spread through sex. Therefore:
Be faithful. Use condoms.
But at least once a day it is Mhingas thankless task to inform a
patient that their blood test results have come back, and yes, the
result is positive. A few years ago he had to break the news no more
than once every two-to-three weeks.
And that's only new patients. Amongst the 40 patients he examines
every day, there are at least two or three who have tested HIV
positive previously.
Aids has already claimed some of his patients' lives this year.
Mhinga, who is married to well-known singer Yvonne Chaka Chaka, tells
of a woman who was diagnosed with HIV five years ago.
Initially healthy, she deteriorated gradually. She stopped working
early last year and by March she had to use a cane to walk. A month
or so ago she arrived at my rooms in a wheelchair. She was tired,
she said. She wanted to lie down on the examination table. Mhinga
says if he had allowed her to, she would have died then and there.
There was barely life left in her.
The next morning her family sent news of her death.
Mhinga is a gentle person. He speaks in a soft tone and cases like
this clearly upset him. He often has to mediate between patients and
their families.
Another patient was HIV positive for six years and steadfastly
refused to inform anyone of her status, including her daughter and
sister.
Mhinga asked them to visit to his rooms. When they were all together,
he asked the patient whether she wanted to convey the news herself,
or whether he should do it. The women then looked her daughter in the
eye and told her whereupon the daughter embraced her mother,
telling her that she had known all along. Her mothers physical
appearance had given her away.
Since then, Mhinga said, the womans condition has improved markedly.
She is eating well, she has gained weight, she even returned to work
probably because she now has her family's emotional support. But a
year ago she was convinced she was dying.
Emotional support, Mhinga maintains, is very important. That's why he
doesn't wear gloves when he examines his patients. In touching them
with his bare hands he shows them that they are acceptable. He will,
at times, take a patient in his arms to comfort them if necessary.
Mhinga claims attitudes towards HIV/Aids have improved. People are
much more open and will talk more readily about the disease. During
funerals over the weekends and there are many funerals over
weekends an announcement is made if the deceased had Aids.
He also believes that information and education campaigns are
reaching people. The condom strategy is also paying off.
He tells of an HIV-positive patient who recently arrived at his rooms
with her new boyfriend for a test. He tested HIV-negative.
The couple are using condoms and Mhinga says he is certain if the
boyfriend were to be re-tested in six months time the test would
return negative, as his experience with similar couples has shown.
However, there remains a certain amount of ignorance regarding
HIV/Aids. Mhingas chooses his words with care: If there are still
people who believe they can be cured by abusing children, stop it
it is a myth.
He deals with girls who have been abused by men seeking a "cure".
They have been raped by family members in the belief they would
be purified of the virus by having sex with a virgin.
But the battle against Aids is not lost. One encouraging aspect of
the issue for Mhinga is in helping someone with the virus to stay
healthy. He maintains the most important factor is following a
healthy diet with a regimen of vitamin supplements. HIV-positive
people should also avoid risky behaviour such as drinking and smoking
and should exercise regularly.
Without expensive drug treatment, he is helping several HIV-positive
patients to lead a normal life by following this routine. Among them
is a person who has been HIV-positive for 12 years and remains
healthy.
Poor patients struggle to maintain a healthy diet, which is why
poverty is an important factor in the HIV/Aids battle. People
suffering from malnutrition do not have a good chance of survival,
he said.
However, he remains positive in dealing with his patients, no matter
how high the HIV/Aids mountain. "You can never give up hope. A cure
for Aids might well be discovered within the next six months or a
year," he says
Although, he says, he would be grateful for just one day without
having to tell a new patient he or she has tested HIV positive.
http://news.24.com/News24/Health/Aids_Focus/0,1113,2-14-
659_991372,00.html
-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 06, 2001.
Who is stealing all the money? There is no aids in Kenya.
Panafrican News Agency (Dakar)
March 5, 2001
Posted to the web March 5, 2001
Nairobi, Kenya
Kenya's annual income could be reduced by more than half due to the
amount of government spending required to sustain the fight against
HIV/AIDS, a local organisation intimated Monday.
The Kenya National AIDS Control Council (KNACC) said that the
country's 180 billion Kenyan shillings (about 2.3 billion US dollars)
annual income could be reduced to 73 billion shillings (about 900
million dollars) if preventive measures were not put in place.
KNACC chairman Dr Mohammed Abdalla made the observation when he
addressed a workshop on the management of HIV/AIDS in the town of
Kericho.
With an average of 200 Kenyans dying of AIDS daily, he said Kenya
ranks ninth in Africa with 2.2 million AIDS patients.
In Kisumu, he noted, several homesteads along Lake Victoria have been
wiped out by the scourge.
Participants at the workshop petitioned the Government to urgently
introduce family life education in schools.
Elsewhere, the chairman for Kakamega County Council chairman,
Johnstone Andambi, affirmed that half of AIDS deaths in the area
occur among people aged between 18 and 40 years.
In neighbouring Homabay area of the Lake Victoria region, district
education officer, Beatrice Adhu, urged play directors and producers
to use theatre to educate the youth on the dangers of HIV/AIDS.
She was speaking at Homa Bay High School while closing a drama
festival for the district's secondary schools.
-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 06, 2001.
AIDS is real. Whether or not HIV has anything to do with it is what
is in dispute:
article:
Note: Dr. Mullis was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
This article is excerpted from his forthcoming book, Dancing Naked in
the Mind Field, to be published by Pantheon.
When I {Kary Mullis] first heard in 1984 that Luc Montagnier
of France's Pasteur Institute and Robert Gallo of America's National
Institutes of Health had independently discovered that the retrovirus
H.I.V. -- human immunodeficiency virus -- caused AIDS, I accepted it
as just another scientific fact. It was a little out of my field of
biochemistry, and these men were specialists in retroviruses.
Four years later I was working as a consultant at Specialty
Labs in Santa Monica. Specialty was trying to develop a means of
using P.C.R. [polymerase chain reaction, a D.N.A.-amplification
method conceived by Mullis] to detect retroviruses in the thousands
of blood donations received per day by the Red Cross. I was writing a
report on our progress for the project sponsor, and I began
by stating, "H.I.V. is the probable cause of AIDS."
I asked a virologist at Specialty where I could find
the reference for H.I.V. being the cause of AIDS.
"You don't need a reference," he told me. "Everybody knows
it."
"I'd like to quote a reference." I felt a little funny about
not knowing the source of such an important discovery. Everyone else
seemed to.
"Why don't you cite the C.D.C. report?" he suggested, giving
me a copy of the Centers for Disease Control's periodic report on
morbidity and mortality. I read it. It wasn't a scientific article.
It simply said that an organism had been identified -- it did not say
how. It requested that doctors report any patients showing certain
symptoms and test them for antibodies to this organism. The report
did not identify the original scientific work, but that didn't
surprise me. It was intended for physicians, who didn't need to know
the source of the information. Physicians assumed that if the
C.D.C. was convinced, there must exist real proof somewhere that
H.I.V. was the cause of AIDS.
A proper scientific reference is usually a published article
in a reliable scientific magazine. These days the magazines are on
slick glossy paper with pictures on the front and lots of
advertisements, a lot of editorial material by people who are
professional journalists, and a few pictures of girls selling you
things you might want to buy for your lab. The advertisers are the
companies that make things for scientists to buy and the companies
that make drugs for doctors to sell. Therefore there are no major
journals without corporate connections.
Scientists submit the articles in order to report their work.
Preparing articles describing their work and having them published is
crucial to a scientist's career, and without articles in major
journals they will lose their rank. The articles may not be submitted
until experiments supporting the conclusions drawn are finished and
analyzed. In primary journals every single experimental detail has to
be there either directly or by reference, so that somebody else can
repeat exactly what was done and find out whether it comes out the
same way in their hands. If it doesn't, somebody will report that,
and the conflict eventually has to be resolved so that when we go on
from here we know where "here" is. The most reliable primary journals
are refereed. After you send in your article, the editors send copies
of it to several of your colleagues for review. They become the
referees.The editors are paid for their work on the journal; the
colleagues are not. But what they do gives them power, which most of
them like.
I did computer searches. Neither Montagnier, Gallo, nor anyone
else had published papers describing experiments which led to the
conclusion that H.I.V. probably caused AIDS. I read the papers in
Science for which they had become well known as AIDS doctors, but all
they had said there was that they had found evidence of a past
infection by something which was probably H.I.V. in some AIDS
patients. They found antibodies. Antibodies to viruses had always
been considered evidence of past disease, not present disease.
Antibodies signaled that the virus had been defeated. The patient had
saved himself. There was no indication in these papers that this
virus caused a disease. They didn't show that everybody with the
antibodies had the disease. In fact they found some healthy people
with antibodies.
If Montagnier and Gallo hadn't really found this evidence, why
was their work published, and why had they been fighting so hard to
get credit for the discovery? There had been an international
incident wherein Robert Gallo of the N.I.H. had claimed that his own
lab had not been able to grow the virus from the sample sent to him
by Luc Montagnier in Paris. The virus he was able to grow, he said,
came from samples collected at his end from putative AIDS patients.
Gallo had patented the AIDS test based on these samples, and the
Pasteur Institute had sued. The Pasteur eventually won, but back in
1989 it was a standoff, and they were sharing the profits.
I was hesitant to write "H.I.V. is the probable cause of AIDS"
until I found published evidence that would support it. Mine was the
most minimal statement possible. In my progress report I wasn't
trying to say that it absolutely did cause AIDS, I was just trying to
say that it was likely to cause it for some known reasons. Tens of
thousands of scientists and researchers were spending billions of
dollars a year doing research based on this idea. The reason had to
be there somewhere; otherwise these people would not have allowed
their research to settle into one narrow channel of investigation.
I lectured about P.C.R. at innumerable meetings. Always there
were people there talking about H.I.V. I asked them how it was that
we knew H.I.V. was the cause of AIDS. Everyone said something.
Everyone had the answer at home, in the office, in some drawer. They
all knew, and they would send me the papers as soon as they got back.
But I never got any papers. Nobody ever sent me the news about how
AIDS was caused by H.I.V.
I finally had the opportunity to ask Dr. Montagnier about the
reference when he lectured in San Diego at the grand opening of the
U.C.S.D. AIDS Research Center, which is still run by Bob Gallo's
former consort, Dr. Flossie Wong-Staal. This would be the last time I
would ask my question without showing anger. In response Dr.
Montagnier suggested, "Why don't you reference the C.D.C. report?"
"I read it," I said. "That doesn't really address the issue of
whether or not H.I.V. is the probable cause of AIDS, does it?"
He agreed with me. It was damned irritating. If Montagnier
didn't know the answer, who the hell did?
[....]
-----------
It's not exactly a conspiracy. A hundred+ years ago, the southern US
was plagued with pellagra. It was a devastating disease, obviously
contagious (if one member of a family developed it, the others
usually followed); sufferers were sent to sanatoria, where they were
treated with the most potent medicines of the day (largely
arsenic-based) in an effort to save them.
In 1915, a doctor noticed a strange pattern in a poor southern
orphanage: the youngest children, still regarded as babies and fed
fresh milk products, had no pellagra. The oldest group, old enough
to help work and fed fresh meat, had none. The middle group, 6-11
years old, had neither meat nor milk owing to the limited budget.
Some of *them* developed pellagra. This doctor (name escapes me)
experimented on convicts (you could do that in those days): the ones
kept on an ordinarydiet stayed healthy; the group deprived of meat
and dairy developed pellagra. When their diets were returned to
normal, the pellagra went away.
He published, and was railroaded out of medicine as a "flat earther"
who was denying the truth of the new germ theory of disease -- never
mind that the medical establishment already knew good and well what,
say, scurvy was. Not till 1930 was pellagra recognized as a
vitamin-B devficiency.
Kind of too bad for all those "treated" with arsenic medicines.
The argument today is similar: how can you effectively treat AIDS
(which no one denies is a real, and real nasty, ailment) if you have
not correctly nailed down its causation?
For the record, Dr. Mullis continues to speak out, at every
opportunity, on his frustration at not finding ANY paper
*scientifically* demonstrating that HIV *causes* AIDS.
Many things can cause a "false-positive" reading on an HIV test,
including flu and having borne more than one child. Once you are
HIV+, your (for example) tuberculosis is no longer "just" TB but AIDS
and you are treated not with TB-specific medicine, but with the
viciously-toxic (albeit not arsenic-based) AIDS drugs. Oddly, your
chances of dying of AIDS are significantly higher (1:4 or 1:3) in
Western countries with easy access to these drugs, than in Africa
(1:15 or so).
Knowing the etiology is *vital*.
Can you imagine how embarrassed some of those old pellagra doctors
must have felt?
-- L. Hunter Cassells (mellyrn@nist.gov), March 06, 2001.
ProMED Digest Tuesday, March 6 2001 Volume 2001 : Number 052
***************************************
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2001 22:41:53 -0500 (EST)
From: ProMED-mail
Subject: PRO/AH> Foot & mouth disease, antiquated control
FOOT & MOUTH DISEASE, ANTIQUATED CONTROL
****************************************
A ProMED-mail post
ProMED-mail, a program of the International Society for Infectious
Diseases
Date: 4 Mar 2001
From: C.H. Calisher
Dr. D.A. Henderson and I have been chatting back and forth about
foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). As always, he had a number of questions
and comments and, as always, I could not answer them. Here is what he
said, modified slightly by me as follows:
"It seems to me that with the enormous increase in movement of people
and animals that takes place, the concept of controlling FMD by the
elaborate rituals to assure FMD free countries is no longer tenable
or appropriate. What is wrong with a vaccination program?
The cost per animal is surely not a limiting factor. The vaccine has
to match a prevalent or likely-to-be-prevalent strain. We do this now
with influenza. Is anyone investing significant effort to develop a
more broadly antigenic vaccine?
I've always thought that the present approaches to FMD are antiquated
but the implications of pursuing the present strategy look to me to
be absolutely devastating."
My sentiments exactly. No matter what the International Committee on
Taxonomy of Viruses says (i.e., that there is one FMD virus species
and 7 serotypes of that single virus species), any of 7 viruses can
cause FMD. It may be taxonomically sound to consider 7 viruses that
do not cross-protect against each other as representing a single
species, but it is counterproductive in practical terms. For example,
if one immunizes against one serotype and then challenges the animal
with that serotype and the animal withstands that challenge, that
animal must be immune to that serotype. If one then challenges that
animal with another serotype and that animal succumbs to infection
with the second serotype, how can anyone say that the two serotypes
are the same virus? Same species, sure, but not the same virus.
Given the broad and remarkable advances in modern studies of viral
molecular genetics, why is it not possible to clone a conserved
portion (possessed by all these viruses, else they would not be so
closely related) of the genome of these viruses and prepare a vaccine
against any and all of them? We ask this simply because we do not
know the answer. Present vaccination programs appear to be based on
vaccination against the specific serotype circulating in one place at
one time. Surely topotypic variations cannot make much of a
difference with respect to application of a vaccine comprised of a
broadly cross-reactive antigen, one that would protect against all
serotypes. Alternatively, if a DNA vaccine has not been considered,
now would be the time to do so.
It is my own opinion/observation that research into the intricacies
of FMD and the viruses that cause it likely has been inhibited by
economics constraints as much as by intellectual ones. Markets for
illegal sales of livestock is a world-wide problem. Hypocritical
functionaries who look the other way when cattle are slaughtered or
moved from their country to another country and slaughtered there,
who look the other way when beef carcasses are moved by train, in
broad daylight, from country to country, are known to function with
impunity in the name of national sovereignty. Few countries are
willing to stick their noses into the affairs of another country. So,
disgusting traditions continue without hope for abatement and
maintenance of "markets" are the sine qua non of the industry and of
political goals.
Perhaps there is a need for a W.H.O.-type organization for livestock.
Not an organization that counts bodies but a proactive organization,
one that will send people to the problem area and assist the local
authorities in making decisions and in taking actions.
The situation in England, and now elsewhere, is no different from the
situations faced by other countries in other times. Is this story
destined to be told again and again and again? Checking the shoes of
walkers just does not seem to be the most enlightened of techniques
for control of a disease, particularly when modern molecular methods
are practically screaming to be applied. We ought all to reread
Santayana.
- --
Charles H. Calisher, Ph.D.
Department of Microbiology
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado, USA
***************************************
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2001 22:27:47 -0500 (EST)
From: ProMED-mail
Subject: PRO/AH> Foot & mouth disease page on website
FOOT & MOUTH DISEASE PAGE ON WEBSITE
A ProMED-mail post
ProMED-mail, a program of the International Society for Infectious
Diseases
Date: 5 Mar 2001
From: ProMED-mail
This is to announce a new page on the ProMED-mail website:
Latest Foot and Mouth Information
Look for it on our Home Page at
It carries the most recent 20 posts on the outbreak from the e-mail
list, so you have them all in one place.
- --
ProMED-mail
***************************************
-- Andre Weltman (aweltman@state.pa.us), March 06, 2001.
Sorry Dude, You've been had. Aids (30 different diseases we already
have in conjunction with being tested positive for HIV (harmless)) is
caused by environmental pollution. In Africa, the main culprit is
Benzene (read Hulda Clark, Cure for all Disease). It's in their
water supply from long term exposure to DDT and pesticides to control
malaria. Many now have immune systems damaged beyond repair, and yes
they are dying. Just not from anything caused by HIV. Once they get
tested, they are literally quarantined away from further medication
(like for the malaria they already had) since the doctors are so sure
they are going to die anyway, why waste good medicine on a lowly
"aids" patient.
-- ken (n4wind@aol.com), March 06, 2001.
Hulda Clark definately has had a colorful career.
The Bizarre Claims of Hulda Clark
Stephen Barrett, M.D.
Hulda Regehr Clark, 71, claims to cure cancer, AIDS, and many other
serious diseases. She describes herself as an "independent research
scientist" with bachelor and master's degrees from the University of
Saskatchewan and a Ph.D. degree in physiology from the University of
Minnesota (1958). She also lists a naturopathic (N.D.) degree, but
the source is not identified [1]. Her treatment is available at
Century Nutrition, a clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, where the basic fee
for two weeks of "treatment" is $4,500 (plus 10% tax). This figure
does not include the cost of a motel room (approximately $210/week);
meals ($250/week); blood tests ($70 each); standard diagnostic
imaging tests ($40 to $400); dental x-rays (at least
$206); "individually tailored" supplements ($400 to $1,500 for a
month supply); equipment (about $350); tooth extractions ($80 each);
and partial or full dentures ($450).
Bizarre Claims
Clark claims that all cancers and many other diseases are caused
by "parasites, toxins, and pollutants" and can be cured by killing
the parasites and ridding the body of environmental chemicals. Her
book The Cure for All Cancers states:
All cancers are alike. They are all caused by a parasite. A single
parasite! It is the human intestinal fluke. And if you kill this
parasite, the cancer stops immediately. The tissue becomes normal
again. In order to get cancer, you must have this parasite. . . .
This parasite typically lives in the intestine where it might do
little harm, causing only colitis, Crohn's disease or irritable bowel
syndrome, or perhaps nothing at all. But if it invades a different
organ, like the uterus, kidneys or liver, it does a great deal of
harm. If it establishes itself in the liver, it causes cancer! It
only establishes itself in the liver of some people. These people
have propyl alcohol in their body. All cancer patients (100%) have
both propyl alcohol and the intestinal fluke in their livers. The
solvent propyl alcohol is responsible for letting the fluke establish
itself in the liver. In order to get cancer, you must have both the
parasite and propyl alcohol in your body [1:1-2].
Clark further alleges:
The adult fluke -- which she misspells as Faciolopsis buskii --
"stays stuck to our intestine, (or liver, causing cancer, or uterus,
causing endometriosis, or thymus, causing AIDS, or kidney, causing
Hodgkin's disease)." [1:4] Or the pancreas, causing diabetes; the
brain, causing Alzheimer's disease; the prostate (causing
prostatitis; or the skin if you have Kaposi's sarcoma [1:35].
As soon as there are adults in the liver. . . . a growth factor,
called ortho-phospho-tyrosine appears. Growth factors make cells
divide. Now YOUR cells will begin to divide too! Now you have
cancer. . . . Having propyl alcohol in your body allows the fluke to
develop outside of the intestine [1:8].
When the fluke and all its stages have been killed, the ortho-phospho-
tyrosine is gone! Your cancer is gone [1:9].
Clearly, you must do 3 things: (1) Kill the parasite and all its
stages; (2) stop letting propyl alcohol into your body; and (3) flush
out the metals and common toxins from your body so you can get well
[1:10].
It is not unusual for someone to have a dozen (or more) of the
parasites I have samples of. You can assume that you, too, have a
dozen different parasites [1:10].
Three herbs, used together, can rid you of over 100 types of
parasites: black walnut hulls, wormwood, and common cloves [1:11-12].
But the amino acids ornithine and arginine improve this recipe
[1:15].
Use of these five products will kill the cancer-causing fluke in the
first five days and the remaining parasites in another two weeks
[1:19].
It takes 5 days to be cured of cancer regardless of the type you
have. Surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy can be canceled because,
after Clark's recipe cures the cancer, it cannot come back
[1:introductory passage].
All metal (fillings, crowns, bridges, etc.) should be removed from
the mouth, and all teeth with root canals should be extracted,
because their presence damages the immune system [1:46-48].
To prevent recurrence, stay on a maintenance program of killing
parasites and give yourself a high-dose program at least twice a
year. Also treat all family members and household pets [1:23-26].
All of the above notions are absurd. In a recent talk that attacked
widespread misbeliefs about parasites, the president of the American
Society of Parasitologists noted that if Clark's pseudoscientific
claims were correct, "the medical establishment and . . .
professional pathologists are guilty of a gigantic and cruel fraud on
the public." [2]
Patients who "cleanse" their intestines with Clark's recommended
herbs may excrete what they think are parasites. However, in one
instance I know of, a specimen of "parasites" turned out to be citrus
fibers, presumably from grapefruit juice used for the "cleanse."
Phony Devices
Clark is also using and promoting two devices. Her Syncrometer is
claimed to identify diseased organs and toxic substances by noting
whether the device makes various sounds when "test substances" are
placed on a plate [1:373-427]. The device is simply a galvanometer
that measures skin resistance to a low-voltage current that passes
from the device through a probe touched to the patient's hand.
Various models for home use can either be commercially purchased or
made by the patient. Clark's "Zapper" is a low-voltage device that
supposedly kills parasites, bacteria, and viruses with electrical
energy, but does not harm human tissue. Its use is based on Clark's
notion that all living things broadcast a characteristic range of
radio frequencies and that the device can issue counter-frequencies
that kill unwanted organisms [3]. Neither device has any genuine
diagnostic or therapeutic value.
Clark's books, herbal products, and "Zapper" devices said to be built
to her specifications are marketed through many Web sites [A, B, C,
D, E, F, G, H, I], one of which is the Self Help Resource Center,
administered by Clark's son Geoff.
Her ideas are also advocated by the Dr. Clark Research Association, a
group founded in 1998 by David P. Amrein, a Scientologist who
describes himself as a freelance consultant in finance and taxes.
Membership, which costs $40 per year, includes a subscription to the
Dr. Clark Research Association Bulletin, which Amrein edits. The
November 1999 issue stated that the Bulletin had a circulation of
1,500.
In November 1999, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
announced that it had stopped an Australian company (Raylight Pty
Ltd) from advertising that its "Parasite Zapper" passes an electric
current through a person's blood and is effective against the AIDS
virus, parasites, hepatitis, herpes, obesity, and other serious
conditions. The company also agreed to provide refunds to consumers
who felt they had been mislead [4].
Case Histories
Pages 119-372 contain "case histories" of 138 cancer patients, of
whom 103 were "cured" and 35 who "did not carry out instructions or
could not be followed." The standard way to determine whether a
treatment is effective is to carefully record the nature of the
patient's disease before treatment and to determine the patient's
condition indefinitely. Clark's reports contain little information
about the patient's history and no indication that Clark performed
any physical examinations. The only follow-up reports are for a few
patients who returned for further treatment -- usually a few weeks
later. Cancer treatment results are normally expressed in terms of
cancer-free status or survival over periods of years. Five-year
survival rates are a common measure. Clark claims she can tell that
patients are cured as soon as their ortho-phospho-tyrosine test is
negative -- within days or even a few hours after her treatment is
begun. This claim is preposterous.
Thirty-eight of the 103 reports indicate that the patient had been
medically diagnosed with cancer, and most of these 38 had received
standard treatment. In 59 other cases, however, there was no
indication that the patient had undergone any medical test or
treatment that would indicate the presence of a cancer. (In 10 other
cases, which Clark diagnosed as HIV infection, there was no history
suggestive of AIDS. In the rest, it was not clear whether the patient
had been medically diagnosed with cancer.)
Judging from the reports, Clark's judgments were based entirely on
the results of her own peculiar diagnostic tests. If "ortho-phospho-
tyrosine" was found in the blood, the patient had cancer. If
a "protein 24 antigen" was found in the blood, the patient had AIDS.
And, anywhere from a few hours to several weeks later, if these tests
became negative, Clark considered the patient cured. The book
describes how some of the patients who had consulted Clark for other
problems were startled to hear they had cancer or AIDS.
None of the reports provides any basis for concluding that Clark's
treatment has the slightest value. The majority of the people
described in the 103 case reports did not have cancer. Of those that
did, most had received standard medical treatment or their tumors
were in their early stages. In these cases, Clark pronounced them
cured but did not follow what happened after they left her clinic --
so she could not possibly know how they did afterward. In some cases,
she counted patients as cured even though she noted that they died
within a few weeks after she treated them.
Legal Trouble
In September 1999, Clark was arrested in San Diego, California, based
on a fugitive warrant from Indiana, where she faced charges of
practicing medicine without a license. In November, a former patient
filed suit accusing her of negligence and fraud.
The criminal case originated when Clark lived and practiced in
Indiana [5,6]. In 1993, after a former patient complained to the
Indiana attorney general, a health department official visited
accompanied by a deputy attorney general visited her office and was
diagnosed with AIDS and sent to a laboratory for a blood test [7].
Clark -- apparently tipped off by the lab -- found out she was being
investigated and left Indiana a few days later. In 1999, Clark was
apprehended in California and returned to Indiana to stand trial.
However, in April 2000, an Indiana judge dismissed the charges on
grounds that too much time had elapsed between the filing of the
charges and Clark's arrest. The judge's verdict did not address the
merits of the charges but only the issue of whether the delay had
compromised Clark's ability to mount a defense and her right to a
speedy trial [8].
The civil case was filed by Esther and Jose Figueroa of New York City
against Clark, the Dr. Clark Research Association, Century Nutrition,
and several associated individuals. Mrs. Figueroa, who had been
medically diagnosed with breast cancer, sought treatment in September
1998. The court papers state that she was told:
Dust from her apartment was responsible for her breast cancer.
Returning to her apartment would place her at special risk to develop
leukemia because of her blood type.
She had asbestos, lead, and a lot of copper in her system.
The Syncrometer detected a parasite called "rabbit fluke" inside her
breast.
She also had E. coli, asbestos, and salmonella due to improper food
sterilization.
Several teeth should be removed and "cavitations" in her lower jaw
should be scraped out.
The suit also charges that
Clark subsequently arranged for all of Mrs. Figueroa's front and
molar teeth to be removed, prescribed more than 30 dietary and herbal
supplements to be taken during a 12-week period, and badly burned her
breast while administering treatment with a "Zapper" device.
During the 3-month period of treatment, the tumor increased from 1.5
cm to 14 cm.
Despite this fact, Mrs. Figueroa was falsely told that she was
getting better, that tests for "cancer markers" were negative, and
that pain she was experiencing did not reflect persistence of her
cancer.
Libel Campaign
Various Internet postings indicate that in September 1999, Hulda
Clark's son, Geoffrey, hired Tim Bolen to assist her after she was
arrested. Bolen and his wife Jan do business as JuriMed, an entity
whose stated purpose is to assist "alternative" health practitioners
faced with regulatory action, criminal prosecution, or other matters
that threaten their financial well-being and/or license to practice.
Bolen refers to JuriMed as a "public Relattions and Research Group."
November 1999, the Bolens began distributing false and defamatory
statements to the effect that:
I am arrogant, bizarre, closed-minded, emotionally disturbed,
professionally incompetent, intellectually dishonest, a dishonest
journalist, sleazy, unethical, a quack, a thug, a bully, a Nazi, a
hired gun for vested interests, the leader of a subversive
organization, and engaged in criminal activity (conspiracy,
extortion, filing a false police report, and other unspecified acts).
Terry Polevoy, M.D. (a Canadian pediatrician who operates anti-
quackery Web sites) is dishonest, closed-minded, emotionally
disturbed, professionally incompetent, unethical, a quack, a fanatic,
a Nazi, a hired gun for vested interests, and engaged in criminal
activity (conspiracy, stalking of females, and other unspecified
acts) and has made anti-Semitic remarks.
Attorney Grell (who represents Esther and Jose Figueroa in their suit
against Hulda Clark) is professionally incompetent and has filed a
false report with the FBI.
Many of the messages were republished (sometimes with embellishment)
on Web sites, in news group postings, and in other e-mail messages --
by other Clark allies and supporters.
After Clark's arrest, a defense fund was established to pay for
expenses associated with defending her against "legal attacks." A
description of the fund states that the covered expenses would
include attorney fees, publicists, expert witnesses, court costs, and
appeals and that Goeffrey Clark would administer the money without
compensation. The report also stated that by May 31, 2000, the fund
had raised $113,943.76, earned interest of $665.96, and spent
$27,900.51 for legal expense, $327.65 for "Acct/Copies," $56,408.43
for public relations, and $714.30 for Hulda Clark's travel. It did
not indicate how much of the public relations payment went to the
Bolens.
In October 2000, I filed suit in my local court against Joseph
Mercola, M.D., of Shaumberg, Illinois [9]. In November 2000, Attorney
Grell, Dr. Polevoy and I filed suit in California against Hulda
Clark, the Bolens, Jurimed, David Amrein, the Dr. Clark Association,
and others who have spread or conspired to spread the defamatory
messages [10].
More Legal Trouble?
On February 16, 2001, Mexican authorities inspected Century Nutrition
and ordered it to shut down. According to a report in the San Diego
Union Tribune, the clinic had never registered.and was operating
without a license. The article stated that authorties planned to
review the matter and reach a final decision within a few days [11].
For Additional Information
A Response to Clark's "Publicist"
A Visit to Clark's Mexican Clinic (1996)
Why the Sychrometer Is a Useless Tool
Interview of Dr. Clark
Three Days of Training with Dr. Clark
Zapper Home Page
Finding the Way: Dr. Hulda Clark Newsletter in UK
References
Clark HR. The Cure for All Cancers. San Diego, CA: ProMotion
Publishing, 1993.
Roberts LS. Presidential address: The cure for all diseases. Journal
of Parasitology 85:996-999, 1999.
Clark HR. The Cure for All Diseases. San Diego, CA: New Century
Press, 1995.
Promoters of alternative therapy devices give undertakings. News
release, Nov 4, 1999. ACCC Web site, accessed Nov 9, 1999.
Holmes S. Woman charged with practicing medicine illegally: Former
Brown County resident arrested in California in case that dates back
six years. Herald-Times, Bloomington, Indiana, Oct 4, 1999.
Fleischer J. Former resident arrested in California. Brown County
Democrat, Oct 6, 1999.
Huffman AM. Probable cause affidavit. May 25, 1993.\
Hinnefield S. Judge says delay in arrest, prosecution of alternative
health practitioner was too long
Hoosier Times, April 19, 2000.
Barrett vs. Mercola. Civil action No 2000-C-2524. Court of Common
Pleas. Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Filed Oct 3, 2000.
Barrett et al vs Clark et al. Verified complaint for damages for
libel, libel per se, and conspiracy to commit libel. Superior Court
of the State of California, County of Alameda. Filed Nov 3, 2000.
Crabtree P, Dibble S. BioPulse to sell its cancer lab in Tijuana. San
Diego Union-Tribune, Feb 17, 2001.
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/clark.html
-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 06, 2001.
Hulda Clark may be a quack. However, she is not the only one
questioning the connection between HIV and AIDS. Even Luc
Montagnier, the man who first identified what is now called HIV, does
not regard HIV alone as sufficient to cause AIDS and he is now in
active research for "co-factors," things which, in the presence of
HIV, would then lead to AIDS--and without which AIDS would *not*
happen, regardless of the presence of HIV.
-- L. Hunter Cassells (mellyrn@nist.gov), March 07, 2001.
FOOT & MOUTH DISEASE, EPIDEMIOLOGIC HISTORY
A ProMED-mail post
ProMED-mail, a program of the International Society for Infectious
Disease
Date: 7 Mar 2001
Source: Rediff, 7 Mar 2001 [edited]
A strain of the Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) virus, responsible for
causing one of the most contagious animal diseases, first appeared in
northern India a decade ago, a newspaper report said in London.
The virus responsible for the current outbreak of FMD in British
animals, reached Britain after a 10-year spread across the Middle
East, Asia and the southern tip of Africa, The Times quoted an
analysis published in Veterinary Record by a team from Pirbright
Laboratory of the Institute for Animal Health.
It said the pan-Asia strain first appeared in northern India in 1990
and spread to Saudi Arabia, probably through the trade in live sheep
and goats, and then into neighboring countries. By 1996, it was in
Turkey, from where it reached Greece and Bulgaria.
From India it spread east and west -- to Nepal in 1993 and 1994,
Bhutan in 1998, Tibet and Hae in China in 1999. Pan-Asia's final port
of call before reaching Britain was South Africa, near Durban, the
report said. Its 2 biggest conquests in the far east were Japan and
Korea. Japan had been free of FMD since 1908, and Korea since 1934
and both have strict rules covering animal and meat imports.
According to Prof Chris Bostock, director of the Institute for Animal
Health, the disease shows a preference for pigs which leads to a
massive production [viral replication] of itself.
---
ProMED-mail
-- Andre Weltman (aweltman@state.pa.us), March 09, 2001.
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 22:53:16 -0500 (EST)
From: ProMED-mail
Subject: PRO/AH> Foot & mouth disease, antiquated control (03)
FOOT & MOUTH DISEASE, ANTIQUATED CONTROL (03)
A ProMED-mail post
ProMED-mail, a program of the International Society for Infectious
Disease
[1]
Date: 6 Mar 2001 From: O. Hotz de Baar
[From a previous post:"It seems to me that with the enormous increase
in movement of people and animals that takes place, the concept of
controlling FMD by the elaborate rituals to assure FMD-free
countries is no longer tenable or appropriate. What is wrong with a
vaccination program?]
This is being discussed in some depth elsewhere, but perhaps with
less accurate information than can be obtained here. Were a lifetime
vaccine giving near 100% protection available this would no doubt be
the easy option. Unfortunately as far as I (and others) can glean the
available vaccines give only short-term (under a year) and partial
protection; there are no multi-strain vaccines available.
Posts here have said that animals can excrete live virus for a number
of years after infection, so any infected animals, either because
they recovered naturally or vaccination curtailed symptoms, may
infect un-vaccinated animals for some time. That would require
vaccination of all stock once or twice a year.
To be honest, I doubt whether this could be reliably achieved UK-wide
for the many years it would require for all excretors to leave the
system. More likely one would be faced with regular scares of small
outbreaks for a decade or even more. Furthermore, such a regime would
not protect susceptible wildlife (particularly deer) that now share
farmland with stock all over the UK.
I also draw to your attention the fact that FMD is spectacularly
infectious and particularly unpleasant. Whilst the present tragedy in
the UK is extremely distressing to farmers (and I might add a
significant part of the non-farming population), so far the number of
animals culled is only a miniscule portion of the national herd. It
should also be pointed out that it is the first significant outbreak
since 1967, and other countries have been more successful in
maintaining FMD-free status.
As far as I know, the US has been free since the 1920's and Australia
and new Zealand have been similarly effective at excluding the
disease. It is thus clear that maintaining FMD-free status is a
reasonable, even sensible, long-term technique.
It has become clear that the UK has been importing significant animal
products from areas where FMD is known to be endemic. Argentina,
South Africa, and even Botswana have been known to supply the UK.
Controls at ports and airports are slack; figures of 1400 kg of local
meat being found on passengers arriving from Ghana have been quoted.
Contrast that to the strict and rigorous controls in the US,
Australia and New Zealand. It is thus astonishing that the UK has
only had one significant outbreak since 1967. I think it is highly
likely that very many in the UK will demand the banning of animal
products from countries where FMD is endemic.
The contrast between the continued long-term export of meat products
from countries where FMD is endemic and the immediate banning of all
UK produce almost world-wide after one or two cases has been noted.
The banning (which is already in place in many countries as I
understand it) of importation of animal products from countries where
FMD is endemic would put further pressure on these countries to
eradicate the disease (possibly with outside assistance).
There can be little doubt that this would be beneficial to worldwide
animal health, animal welfare, and the economies of those countries
suffering from the ravages of FMD, many of whom have many small
peasant farmers, to whom FMD must be particularly devastating.
---
O. Hotz de Baar, S. England, UK
******************************
[2]
Date: 6 Mar 2001 From: Charles H. Calisher
As expected, I have received many messages which together underline
the complexity of the epidemiology and politics of foot-and-mouth
disease (FMD). It is clear that there are many important and complex
factors, including numerous viruses, various weather conditions,
geography, customs, religions, politics, money and outdated
attitudes. I can scarcely say I understand all this, but I will keep
trying. I summarize below all messages received (no attribution
provided, but I assure the readers that I did not fabricate them).
[NB: Words in brackets are those of Charles H. Calisher.]
1. One of the main reasons vaccination was suspended about 10 years
ago is that countries such as the US and Japan did not accept meat
from vaccinated animals. Hence the trouble.
2. I sympathize with your call for a WHO-like group to oversee
livestock, but would point out that public-choice economics suggests
that some such people will always look the other way, as there is no
institutional check on their behavior and saintly professional types
are rare in any kind of bureaucracy. WHO, for example, just published
an index of national health care systems that called the US system
most responsive to patient needs, but ranked it very low overall
because it wasn't equitable enough. The index had been constructed to
heavily weight equity. Apparently the group's organizational culture
prefers that everyone get equally lousy care. [I think WHO was simply
being subjective in this regard.]
3. The use of ring vaccination [i.e., vaccinating susceptible animals
surrounding the known infected focus, sort of a "cordon sanitaire"]
in conjunction with a slaughter policy successfully eradicated FMD
from Western Europe and most of [what was then colonial] Africa . As
a consequence, research on vaccines in the UK was downgraded because
FMD was no longer considered a threat. [Many of us know outstanding
British FMD scientists who became what is known as "redundant" and
migrated to the US] The US does not have an abiding interest in FMD.
[Not true, but the U.S. does not have an extensive international
mission in this regard. These viruses are included in routine
research studies and diagnostics done at the USDA's Plum Island
Animal Disease Center. In fact, (from the PIADC web site
): "In the decade after World War II,
outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in Mexico and Canada led Congress
to establish USDA's Plum Island Animal Disease Center to keep America
safe, but ready for the worst scenario: the introduction of this or
other potentially devastating foreign animal diseases."]
US vets even persisted in calling it Hoof-and-mouth disease until
very recently. [The Brits might now consider calling it "Foot-in-
Mouth disease] The re-emergence of FMD is a consequence of the
globalization of trade and the cheap food policies adopted by
European governments after WWII. I doubt that the current epidemic in
the UK will bring about a change in public opinion sufficient to
support the investment in vaccine development required. Unfortunately
the viruses causing this disease are antigenically highly variable.
At the recent International Congress of Virology held in Sydney, Fred
Brown and Marc van Regenmortel described a very promising development
in FMDV vaccine research. The peptide vaccine developed by Fred and
his group at Pirbright is the only anti-viral peptide vaccine that is
practical, and Marc's recent modification of it has enhanced its
stability beyond expectation. I don't know whether any company is
interested in developing this approach further.
4. There is a widely used and effective vaccine for FMD. It is used
in countries that have active eradication campaigns in place. There
are also vaccines prepared from several different strains of FMD that
could be used to protect against the pan-Asia strain of FMDV. As far
as I know, the UK has never utilized vaccines to FMD, even in the
1967 outbreak. The reason for this include: (1) in the past the
vaccines had occasionally been shown to be contaminated with live
virus, so those vaccines themselves could cause FMD (this has been
largely controlled recently, and I am sure that vaccines made by the
large multi-nationals are completely safe); (2) vaccinated animals
may be difficult to distinguish serologically from previously
infected animals (eliminating serology as a method of identifying
infected animals); (3) while attempting to "emergency vaccinate"
animals, the vaccination teams can spread disease; (4) and (in my
opinion) most importantly, vaccinated animals may be come infected,
and show less severe signs of disease, despite shedding virus, thus
prolonging an outbreak by allowing infected animals to escape ready
visual detection. Efforts are being directed toward development of
more rapidly acting and more effective vaccines, as well as towards
learning more about infection, with hopes of developing therapeutics
that could help to reduce shedding, and learning more about viral
ecology, spread, evolution, and host range. [Of course, one need not
be concerned about live virus in a vaccine prepared from antigens
unassociated with infectious materials.]
6 [[5?]]. To help celebrate the 100th anniversary of the field of
virology, celebratory meetings were held in Greifswald, Germany, and
Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Marian Horzinek and I served as Editors
of the presented papers for a Special Issue of Archives of Virology
(Springer-Verlag, Vienna/New York, 1999). It was on the Island of
Reims, just outside Greifswald, where Friedrich Loeffler and his
associates did the first work with FMD. Doesn't look to me as though
much has changed in 100 years. This is still a disease with a
political basis. What may be needed is more funding of the right
people, which is not a new concept.
---
Charles H. Calisher, Ph.D., Colorado State University, Fort Collins,
Colorado, U.S.A.
-- Andre Weltman (aweltman@state.pa.us), March 09, 2001.
BB
C
Friday, 9 March, 2001, 13:41 GMT
'Second wave' of disease hits farms
Infected sheep are passing disease to cattle
Two weeks after the ban on animal movements to try
to curb the spread of foot-and-mouth disease, a
"second wave" of new cases has been identified.
It had been hoped that new cases would start to tail
off, as foot-and-mouth normally incubates in livestock
for a maximum of 14 days.
But 13 more cases have been confirmed so far on
Friday, bringing the total number of UK outbreaks to
120.
The figure compares to 185
cases after the same length
of time during the 1967
crisis.
Farmers had been hoping
that the restrictions on the
movement of livestock
during the crisis would be
eased on Friday.
But Chief Veterinary Officer,
Jim Scudamore, said tight restrictions on livestock
movements and other activities that risked spreading
the disease were absolutely essential.
"These restrictions must be retained until we are sure
the outbreak is over," he said.
"To relax the controls too early could lead to a further
deterioration in the situation."
Mr Scudamore was speaking after a regular weekly
meeting with farmers' leaders and members of the
meat and livestock industry.
He said there had been signs that some people felt
that the problem was over and that the tight controls
were no longer required.
"This could have caused
some complacency in
observing the rules," he
said.
The new outbreaks
included some in
previously unaffected areas
and three in Scotland,
bringing the country's total
to 16.
Ministry of Agriculture
officials said the latest
confirmed cases included detection of the disease
among cattle and sheep at a farm in Arthuret in
Cumbria, a farm in Derbyshire and a farm in Shebbear
in Devon.
The National Assembly for Wales said the country's
fifth case was confirmed at the Tawny Owl Animal
Park in Painscastle, Powys.
The sheep and cattle which are at the park will have to
be slaughtered within 24 hours.
Lambing fears
Farmers fear pregnant animals currently left out in the
open will suffer unless they can be brought back to
farms to give birth.
They want the government to allow limited movement
of pregnant sheep, cattle and pigs which are stranded
in open fields, often short of food.
The biggest problem now presenting itself across the
UK is that the disease seems to be spreading most
rapidly among cattle which have come into contact
with sheep carrying the virus.
Mr Scudamore said 89,000 animals had now been
earmarked for slaughter - and that 61,000 of them had
already been culled.
Restrictions were still in place on 144 farms pending
ongoing investigations, while 68 premises had already
been classified as "dangerous contacts", with animals
being destroyed.
Royal visit cancelled
The crisis is continuing to affect sporting fixtures
across the country.
The decision to postpone Cheltenham's prestigious
horse racing festival could cost up to £10m in lost
trade if the event does not go ahead at a later date.
Some horse racing fixtures have resumed.
But the Queen Mother's expected visit to Sandown
Park in Surrey was cancelled on Friday as part of the
course was waterlogged.
The GMB union warned that more than 52,000 jobs in
abattoirs and meat processing centres are at risk
because of the continuing crisis.
-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), March 09, 2001.
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