A recent research report published in the Journal of Pathology questions the prion-only hypothesis of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). TSE diseases include Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans, bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cattle (mad cow disease), scrapie in sheep, and Chronic Wasting Disease in elk and deer. Abnormally misfolded prion proteins are considered to be the transmissible agents in TSEs. A Nobel Prize was awarded for this idea. The Jeffrey et al. study points out flaws in the prion-only hypothesis. It concerns us that there was very little coverage by the lay press and that this very important paper was only described on a few medically related web sites.

The current approach of the U.K. veterinary establishment toward the control of tuberculosis (TB) remains rooted in the reductionist mindset of bygone times: the uncivilized world of blanket slaughtering and badly managed “Badgerogeddons” naively aimed at achieving the impossible — annihilating the TB agent from the face of the Earth.

While livestock farms have been subjected to these mandatory measures of mass slaughter for several decades, the long-term epidemiological pattern of TB outbreaks would appear to remain unaffected. In stark contrast to the predictions of the most astute research teams, TB epidemics have continued to rear their ugly heads with ever increasing frequency. The “experts” remain privately baffled.

Even a child would understand that the official explanation of the cause of the disease is irrational

An 86-year-old English farmer, Pamela Ainslee, is poised to challenge the legal right of UK Dept of Agriculture (DEFRA) vets to slaughter her healthy prize-winning Jersey bull, Cooden Hamlet.

Precariously perched along the cliff tops that span the ancient Sussex section of the English coastline, lies Mrs Ainslee's weather-beaten farm. It is a spectacular patchwork of farmland that represent one of the foremost ‘first glimpses' of England experienced by many a transatlantic passenger on descent into London. Furthermore, her hard-worked fields lie defiantly beneath one of the key spots where World War II Spitfires prevented the Nazis from taking English soil.

For several years now, a US research team has pointed to the cause of the world’s most intensive cluster of neurodegenerative disease on the isle of Guam as the traditional consumption of ‘natural toxins’ found in the fruit of the cycad tree – a rather innocuous looking miniature palm tree that has outlived the dinosaurs and provided a staple flour product for the indigenous people who populate the South Pacific islands.

Despite increasing evidence that the ‘mad cow’ group of diseases stem from environmental as opposed to infectious origins, the first reported case of BSE in the USA has been met with a furore of hyper-infectious hysteria. Whilst the arrival of the disease in North America should not be treated lightly, the epidemiological track record of the BSE outbreaks in Europe suggests that there is no need for the panic.

A Yale pathologist explores the possibility that the culprit in mad cow disease and other related diseases is probably viral

Over the years, government officialdom and media headlines have been consistently promoting the idea that the appearance of BSE in cattle is the result of cattle being fed illegal animal extracts which carry a transmissible agent that attacks the nervous system and brain of the animal, triggering the drooling, the buckling back legs and the loss of bodily control.

The White Sands Missile Range is an extensive spread of US military controlled cacti country that spans the southernmost extremes of the San Andres mountain ridge. There is an eerie atmosphere to the place.

Mad cow disease or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is a progressive, neurodegenerative disease in cattle. The presence of BSE cattle in the food supply has been recognized as an urgent public health concern since 1996, when British scientists hypothesized that some individuals exposed to BSE cows developed a similar fatal condition, new variant Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (nv-CJD). No treatment exists for BSE or related illnesses and historically, these diseases are only diagnosable after death.