The Politics of Mad Cowboy Disease
Here’s how the President is bought and paid for in the USA:
The filthy rich pharmaceutical lobby pumps over $100 million a year into the U.S. Government in the form of campaign contributions and lobbying expenses.
Then our soft-witted — but so very concerned for our health — leader (?! Dear God help us…he’s still in the White House…), the despised-by-72-percent corporate puppet, trots out to his podium and blows this hot cloud of prescription vapor up our rears:
What I don’t want is somebody to say, oh, gosh, I’ll be able to buy a cheaper drug from Canada, and that drug ends up coming from another country, without proper inspection and proper safety. I believe…government has an obligation to make sure…that that which somebody buys is…safe. We have an obligation to do that.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Beef Lobby pumps millions upon millions of dollars into Washington. And, on Tuesday, our Chimp in Chief said he will fight to keep any meatpacker from — voluntarily and at their own expense — testing every single one of their cows for mad cow disease so some of us don’t die a horrible death.
So much for BushCo caring about our safety…
Exporting Mad Cow Disease
Because U.S. beef comes from U.S. cows, and 99 percent of U.S. cows go untested for mad cow disease, China isn’t buying it. And Bush isn’t happy that China isn’t buying U.S. beef:
One area where I’ve been disappointed is beef. They need to be eating U.S. beef. It’s good for them. They’ll like it. And so we’re working hard to get that beef market opened up.
Before 2003, Japan and South Korea imported 2 billion dollars worth of U.S. beef a year. Now they aren’t buying it, either, and South Korea gets its beef from Australia instead of the United States.
So, why are U.S. beef farmers paying so much money to keep from testing every cow? The costs of the additional tests would be expensive, but not as expensive as losing 3 billion dollars in exports to the 36 countries that have banned U.S. beef.
“The bottom line,” says author John Stauber, “is that the U.S. government is afraid of putting in real food-safety testing because it would certainly find additional cases.”
And additional cases would REALLY kill beef profits. But, if there were additional cases slipping by undetected, wouldn’t we already be seeing people get sick from the infected beef?
Maybe, and maybe not…
Mad Cow and Alzheimer’s
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a fatal degenerative brain disease that naturally occurs in about one out of every one million people. CJD can also be caused by mad cow disease.
To make matters worse, CJD is often misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease. Doctors need a brain biopsy to conclusively diagnose which disease a victim has. And, over the last 20 years, the rate of Alzheimer’s disease in the U.S. has skyrocketed…
Nobel Laureate D. Carleton Gajdusek estimates that 1 percent of people we think are suffering from Alzheimer’s may actually have CJD instead. From Yale to the University of Pennsylvania, several studies of Alzheimer autopsies have revealed the misdiagnosis of CJD is at least 3 to 5 percent.
When those percentages are extrapolated to the entire population, it means that hundreds of thousands of dementia-related deaths each year are likely CJD deaths. Since this would be way above the one-in-a-million normal rate of CJD occurrence, thousands of those cases may actually be coming from infected meat…meat from the 99 percent of U.S. cows that still aren’t tested.
In light of what we know — and especially because the incubation period for CJD can be decades — the U.S. should immediately begin testing every single cow whose beef is being raised for human consumption. At the least, we Americans should have the freedom to buy our beef from a company that’s willing to test every single cow they process, whether the government requires them to or not.
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May 30th, 2007 at 6:07 am
You may enjoy this graphic:
http://www.flyingsnail.com/Dahbud/madcow.html
May 30th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Very good article. the Yale studies showed that 13% of the supposed Alzheimers victims really had CJD as verified by autopsy.
Maybe we need a boycott beef week in November to coincide with CJD Awarness Week.
I do not buy beef and hope the rest of us do not either.
May 30th, 2007 at 11:52 am
China won’t buy our beef, yet we import tons of things including food products which go untested from them.
Bush is easy to pick on, because of his stupidity, and his daily nonsensical statements. But as long as both parties are getting their pockets filled by the “K” street bunch, the hell with the American public.
This next election we should have everyone mark their ballots, NONE OF THE ABOVE
May 30th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Dahbud: Nice cow graphic!
Mel: Thanks for pointing out that the Yale studies showed much higher misdiagnosed Alzheimers. There’s really something fishing about so many CJD cases. My only reservation is, if they’re now finding out that a lot of Alzheimer cases are really CJD cases, how can they be sure the “one-in-a-million” normal occurrence rate of CJD is correct? There’s probably a good answer for this, I just haven’t seen it. Assuming the one-in-a-million people CJD rate IS correct, there are a lot of cases out there that need some explaining…
Pelmo: I’m down on both parties too. I know politicians have to wheel and deal a little to get anything done at all, and I don’t fault them for small compromises. But since 9/11, they have been all-out blatantly pandering to Corporate dollars and stiffing average Americans like there’s no tomorrow (which there may not be, if they keep it up…) I’m with you, I’m ready to vote NONE OF THE ABOVE.
May 30th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Don’t eat anything that walks on four legs.
The whole safety argument applied to the embargo on Canadian medicines is so ludicrous. We can buy beer from Mexico, wine from most anyplace. Ham and sardines from Poland. My mother in law brought candy to our kids from her trip to Egypt for christ sake. And Bush is worried about statins from Windsor.
May 30th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Yep…it sounds good to a lot of people in a soundbite playing in the background on their morning drive to work, but when you stop and really think about it, all the other things you mentioned that we can import from other countries and stick in our mouths without FDA approval…it really doesn’t make sense. Those soundbites are just Big Pharma brainwashing.
May 31st, 2007 at 6:07 am
As other posters have noted above, the simple solution is to take control over your own health and stop eating beef. Forget the government. We are on our own, people.
May 31st, 2007 at 6:08 am
By the way, your post should be titled The Politics of Mad Cowboy Disease….
May 31st, 2007 at 6:38 am
That is a GREAT title…I’m using it. Thanks, Lynne!
May 31st, 2007 at 8:54 am
A hunting buddy hasn’t purchased store meat for 18 years now. All comes from hunting (he does eat a steak when he goes out once in awhile).
I have stopped red meat hunting…so eat store beef like a fiend. Hey, bbq season is 365 around my house.
But, on your bigger point:
Our mad cowboy and his posse are against anything that gets in the way of doing business smoothly and with as little government as possible. It’s one of the 10 commandments of at least 1/2 of america.
Using another “boogyman”, they tell us the cost of doing business (being responsible) will drive them out of business….as if we have somewhere else to go to eat.
May 31st, 2007 at 4:38 pm
It’s nice to know 80% of our fish products are imported. The nicer thing to know is that less then 1% of that is inspected, while the EU does 20% and if anything is found wrong 100% is i nspected from the offending country. And congress just cut funding to the department in charge of the inspections. Shows who they are working for.