hypotheses all around, even if this book is dated in, The history of kuru, mad cow, CWD, scrapie, etc, is absolutely fascinating and horrifying, Great book to read in October as you chow down on some grade A beef, the facts in this book are scary, my mom passed away from creutzfeldt Jakob disease may, now I'm learning what my mom was going through, not sure if I can finish this book without getting emotional Fascinating and not a little disturbing if the theories presented are true, It makes the struggle against our base natures even greater but no less important to question,., almoststars. This book is interesting in that the author did plenty of research to support his ideas about the spread of various spongiform diseases in animals, and how they possibly correlate to human dimentiatype diseases like Alzheimers amp CJD.
This book is littered with often similar acronyms, making it hard to keep the different diseases straight, and while Colm throws out plenty of worrisome information, he never explores the concept of "what you can do about it.
" His primary concern seems not to be inciting a public pandemonium, but rather pointing the finger at the governments and blaming them for a lack of foresight, inaction and putting more stock in the interests of Big Business than the Public.
Overall, this was an interesting book, fairly repetitive combined with a failure to flow nicely in the last chapters that clearly wanted to simultaneously draw back the curtain to show disturbing information about our possibly diseased food system and make people question whether or not government has their best interests at heart.
Colm never tells you to become a vegetarian, but neither does he provide any insight on how to locate, procure and eat untainted beef or venison, Also worth noting is Colm's research for this book ends with it's publication inI'd like to know where the situation with Mad Cow Disease and Chronic Wasting Disease in the U.
S. is today esp. in light of their possible connection to incurable human diseases, Is there any way to "kill" or neutralize these diseases in animals yet What's the difference between screening for the disease amp doing an autopsy after death Is either the British, Canadian or US governments acknowledging a link today,years after the book concludes This book appears to be a rehashing of Deadly Feasts, a much better book by Richard Rhodes.
The bulk of the original material is focused on the first American BSE incident and CWD or Chronic Wasting Disease as experienced in the Rocky Mountain states and the MidWest.
The author makes so interesting linkages between unexplained cattle mutilations and possible deep cover operations to guarantee the safety of US beef and dairy cattle, but there is no real scientific proof to back up his conclusions.
He also seems to believe that early experiments on laboratory animals in Putuxent have led to the unleashing of all prion diseases in the US, and that we should expect an epidemic of BSE through cross contamination with wild dear and elk herds.
Again, there is not much science to back this up, although the possibility may exist that such cross contamination is possible, A chilling look at a potential public health disaster looks at the contamination of the American food supply by the deadly prions that cause Mad Cow Disease, traces links between the
human version of Mad Cow Disease and Alzheimer's, and discusses the health implications of the discovery.firs.