Brain Trust: The Hidden Connection Between
Mad Cow Disease & Misdiagnosed Alzheimer's
By Colm A. Kelleher PhD
11-7-4

Brain Trust summarizes a possible looming public health emergency
in the United States. Health and Agriculture authorities in the United
States and in Canada like to play down any suggestion that the food
chain is unsafe, particularly when it comes to the dreaded mad cow
disease that has killed over 150 people in the UK and Europe.
Authorities assure us that there is nothing to worry about over here.
Mad cow disease is predominantly a European problem, they say.

My book, Brain Trust, argues that that this is definitely an American
problem. Not only do we have evidence that mad cow disease has
been in the United States for over 20 years, but we also have an
epidemic of deer and elk disease that has spread like wildfire through
nearly 20 states. The Europeans have only to deal with mad cow
disease. We have both mad cow and mad deer/elk disease.

With eleven million hunters beginning hunting season as we speak,
it is a matter of some urgency that they be warned about possible
dangers of field dressing deer/elk or eating venison. Cooking mad
cow or mad deer meat does not make it safer to eat. You have to
carbonize meat at 600 C to make it safe. By the time it is safe, the
meat is an unpalatable black lump of charcoal.

Mad cow disease is caused by an infectious protein called a prion.
A prion is not a virus and it is not a bacterium. It is simply a different
shape of a protein. Normal prions play a helpful role in the cell, but
when they change shape, they can become lethal. They then kill
brain cells by the billions.

Prion diseases kill humans (CJD), cows (BSE aka mad cow disease),
sheep (scrapie), deer/elk (Chronic Wasting Disease: CWD) and an
assortment of other animal species including mink, squirrels, cats,
ostriches etc. More worryingly, prions can jump species. This lead
to questions for hunters like: can prions jump from deer/elk to humans?
Or can prions jump from deer/elk to cattle?
...
So what is the connection between the human prion disease (CJD)
and Alzheimer's Disease (AD)? Firstly, the astounding recent increase
in AD in the United States has not been sufficiently highlighted by the
media. In 1979, only 653 people died of AD. In 2002, that number
had increased to 50,000 deaths. A 9,000% increase in deaths for any
disease in a mere 25 years should be cause for a national emergency.
Instead, old people now are almost expected to die of AD. This was
not the case a few generations ago. AD was a rare disease in the 1960s.

AD is quite difficult to diagnose. Mood swings, psychiatric problems,
sleep problems, eye problems, memory problems are all loosely
associated with dementia. Some of these AD symptoms overlap with
CJD symptoms. The main difference is that AD takes much longer to
progress to death. CJD is much more rapid. Typically, people die
3-18 months after CJD diagnosis. The gold standard for diagnosing
CJD is by autopsy and pathology studies of the brain. Two shocking
studies, one from Yale University and the second from University of
Pittsburgh really opened my eyes when I first saw them. When
researchers studied the brains of dead Alzheimer's disease patients,
they found that between 5-13% had actually been wrongly diagnosed.
These people had really died of CJD. Now, what does this say
regarding the supposed rarity of CJD in the USA?

We are routinely told that CJD is so rare, only 1 in a million people
get it. But with 4-5 million Alzheimer's Disease patients currently
putting an enormous strain on the US healthcare system, if even a
small percentage of these people actually have CJD, not AD, then
CJD is much more common than we have been told. These figures
imply thousands of CJD cases in the US that are going undetected
because of a lack of autopsies. Recent reports indicate that most
pathologists do not want to conduct autopsies on CJD patients for
fear of contaminating their facilities with the indestructible prions.
And to make matters even worse, CJD is not even a mandatory
reportable disease in about half the states in the USA. That means
authorities have no real idea of how many CJD cases actually exist.
.......... ...
http://rense.com/general59/sdme.htm

"pearl" > wrote in message
>
> With eleven million hunters beginning hunting season as we speak,
> it is a matter of some urgency that they be warned about possible
> dangers of field dressing deer/elk or eating venison. Cooking mad
> cow or mad deer meat does not make it safer to eat.

If hunters are the main concern here, lets not worry too much.