Mad Cow Disease The Great British Beef Scandal.

[HelenaDove]

Is anyone else watching?

[everythingbackbutyou]

@cazb78, you and me both! And I went to a school in an area that was a vcjd hotspot. 'Terrified' doesn't begin to describe how I felt when I started researching it when it was fresh news in the 90s.

[cazb78]

I have been obsessed - and I mean obsessed - with this disease for years and years. Nobody I have met takes it as seriously as I do and I can’t understand why nit. My husband says “you could die of anything” but my issue with vcjd is that it’s an avoidable disease. I’ve read loads of research and every month I check the Vcjd statistics on the cjd surveillance website. I truly believe we are being kept in the dark about the true extent of this illness. My own mum has dementia but who’s to say he’s b it vcjd? Post mortem is the only way to truly verify the true cause of death. I ate beef in the 80s. My own son had a blood transfusion as he was 14 weeks early. This disease is a time bomb. Just wait.

[SwedishEdith]

I've watched this twice now. Very worrying. This is interesting about the recent MV case. Have there been more since then - allowing for missed diagnoses? There have still only (I know) been 223 deaths so far.

www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-first-reported-case-of-variant-creutzfeldt-jakob-disease-in-a-patient-with-mv-genotype/

[staydazzling]

if there was any more evidence needed that tories are bad news

[staydazzling]

that was so disturbing making bloody cows eat meat how disgraceful , those horrible school dinners brought back memories at the very least school dinners are much better now.

[HelenaDove]

that poor young girl...........and this was preventable

[HelenaDove]

I was 17 in 1990 but didnt know about the cats

[HelenaDove]

he got moved to another job for his troubles.

[HelenaDove]

scientist says he found BSE does not act in the same way as scrapie

[HelenaDove]

On BBC2 again now.

[tenthreginald]

Well fuck me. That was rough viewing. Totally harrowing

[BertieBotts]

YY exactly Juniper. I wasn't aware of it at all as a child, either I was too young to be aware or DPs decided that they didn't want to scare me so didn't say anything about it. Though I do remember getting a daft chain email thing from my dad which had a joke about Mad Cow Disease in it.

I definitely assumed it was all in the past until I read that reddit comment three years ago about them being dormant for 30-50 years. I don't think most people realise this.

[Veterinari]

There’s a great podcast episode on this. The podcast is ‘this podcast will kill you’ It’s a really accessible look at different diseases and they cover prions.

I’m about to have surgery and have specifically requested no blood transfusions unless it’s a medical emergency. I used to date a doctor who had the same viewpoint - when you consider blood-transmissible diseases that have emerged over the past 50 years, the truth is that we can’t do anything about them until they’re already a problem and there are definite unknown infectious disease risks with routine blood transfusion

[Solewindow]

Firstimpressionsofearth

btw it's not a new disease. it's been observed in sheep as well. and deer.

But aren't those naturally occurring illnesses that can't jump to other species

They're no different, it's just they haven't jumped, it's not guaranteed that they can't or won't.

[JuniperNarni]

I'm guessing that more people didn't watch it and it hasn't has had as much coverage as you'd think because people are ignorant to it. Exactly the same as I was before I watched it. I honestly thought it was all a thing of the past.

I watched it if anything to put my childhood fears to bed, the television coverage scared me silly as a child so I thought watching that would help me process it. Now it is more scary than it was then. I suppose for a lot of people it is a really tragic, horrible thing that happened back then but all is safe now so there wasn't that much interest in watching the footage be replayed.

[Firstimpressionsofearth]

btw it's not a new disease. it's been observed in sheep as well. and deer.

But aren't those naturally occurring illnesses that can't jump to other species. I thought the thing with bse was that it was due to the cows canabalising other cows brains and it was jumping to other species that then ate the brains and spines of the bse cows.

[FloofenHoofen]

Solewindow that was what they originally thought but then more recently someone died of it and when they looked at his appendix there was no sign of it. So they realised that it wasn't an accurate source.

[HIVpos]

@namechange35 did you think you would be somehow exposed to the person you were looking after’s brain or spinal fluid? Or catch it in some other way? It does seem that only those of us with a certain gene are susceptible regardless.

As with anything, it’s important to keep it in context and not to scaremonger, rather learn the facts. As said, sometimes you have to dig deeper and read more viewpoints from reliable sources . There was some interesting info on this recently in another thread on blood donations with some great info from Solasshole in particular.

[Mooey89]

I watched it and it fucking terrified me - I was born in 89 but both my parents were veggie from about 93 - but I remember that because of that I was only allowed meat at school or when I stayed with other people - so all cheap 😂.

I’ve been properly veggie since I was 12 - but I guess I’m theory milk etc could be contaminated too?

I’ve also had a blood transfusion
What makes me sick is that it is such a man made avoidable disease.

I work with a lot of people who have neurological illnesses and I do wonder how you could tell the difference between vCJD and other degenerative neurological conditions.

[Solewindow]

It was an interesting programme but having done some reading subsequently it was a bit over-traumatised in my opinion. The contributions largely came from scientists who are, entirely reasonably, pissed off that they weren't listened to at the outset.

Accordingto an interesting article in New Scientist they can test for it in appendices and they apparently screen removed appendices. I read that 1 in 2000 of us probably have the prion protein. What is POSITIVE news though is that based on the number who they think have the protein, and the proportion of people with the MM gene variant, they'd have expected many many more cases in the first wave of young people affected than were actually seen. In other words of the people who are in the hugh risk group and should have exhibited the disease swiftly, only a small proportion were affected.

The significance of the genes is that only the M gene is susceptible to being changed by the prion. Those with VV shouldn't be affected at all. Those with MV could be affected but because they have less M protein to start with the progress of the disease is much slower.

[namechange35]

I looked after someone with suspected CJD . I remember asking if I could catch it and being told there was no chance . I’m not sure how much I actually believe that to be honest .

[BertieBotts]

Oh thanks for the correction HIVPos - I must have had outdated info.

Very interesting to hear about the separation of surgical instruments. I've had surgery outside the UK (not spinal or brain though), I wonder if those would have been separated in the same way? Just thinking I've also had an epidural outside of the UK but I think the bits that contact are disposable there?

[AuntieGT]

I suppose if you’re elderly and you present with dementia like symptoms they don’t go poking around for another diagnosis, give CT scans and such like. That is scary. So there could be lots more cases of vCJD than we know about. Can’t help thinking it’s convenient for the gov/NHS to minimise the true number as much as possible too.

[bumblenbean]

The only slightly reassuring thing I suppose is that given the amount of people who must have been exposed a relatively small number with the first gene type developed the disease in the first ‘wave’ - does that suggest that some people are somehow immune or less susceptible? There are bound to be more cases but it doesn’t seem that every person exposed to contaminated meat will definitely go on to develop it. I’m clutching at straws here ...

[HelenaDove]

This programme really needs to be seen by more people.