wrote:
In article ,
The moderator wrote:


[ Re vCJD ]

I think you made the OP's point. The worst plausible scenario was not
plausible.

You're wrong. It was horribly plausible, given what was known at
the time.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

To twist the original thread name, your reply is bullshit. "Horribly
plausible"? To consider what might occur there is Definite, Probable,
Possible, and Plausible. It was plausible that the earth was flat until
proved otherwise. I suppose it was plausible that the moon was made of
green cheese before the facts were examined carefully.

I suggest you go back and read some of the "scientific" comments made at the
time. I had access to all the main medical and general (such as "Nature")
journals at the time (1996) and could not believe what I was reading in
them. I was ashamed to be called a scientist. The term "junk science"
appeared a dozen of so years earlier, and many of the comments were junk
science in spades. After reading several of the "plausible" scenarios I made
the very simple decision to continue eating beef - even mince. I put my
mouth where my money was to turn a saying. I did really well as the price
of beef fell. In fact, I was wrong in my original posting - the main
pathogenic effect was on unfortunate famers. I haven't checked the figures,
but I would guess that more beef farmers have died through stress or suicide
as a result of financial worries caused by MCD than those people who have
died from MCD.

Here is a comment from the first news archive in
http://www.mad-cow.org/00/archive_frame.html
'Few understood that when it comes to safety in food, the perception of risk
is not mathematical. It's psychological. One young man who gave up beef
explained his decision this way: "They say the risk of getting the disease
is one in a million or about the same as winning the lottery. And that may
be true. But every week I play the lottery."'

Someone will win the lottery, and someone will die of MCD, but the figures
are heavily in favour of the lottery. In over 13 years since MCD appeared,
there have been only 200 deaths or so WORLDWIDE from it, with just under 170
in the UK.

Hopefully, we will both be contributing to this newsgroup in 25 years time
or so. One of us will have been proved wrong. It won't be me.

--
Jeff