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Compost Heap. Horse Manure. Pathogens.
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. |
#2
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Compost Heap. Horse Manure. Pathogens.
In article ,
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. Bottom line for me is try not to eat any thing that eats it own. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_...ncephalopathy„ Bill -- Garden in shade zone 5 S Jersey USA http://prototype.nytimes.com/gst/articleSkimmer/ |
#3
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Compost Heap. Horse Manure. Pathogens.
dont eat anything that has been FED its own.
On Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:28:58 -0400, Bill who putters wrote: Bottom line for me is try not to eat any thing that eats it own. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_...ncephalopathy„ Bill Somewhere between zone 5 and 6 tucked along the shore of Lake Michigan on the council grounds of the Fox, Mascouten, Potawatomi, and Winnebago |
#5
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Compost Heap. Horse Manure. Pathogens.
In article ,
Jeff Layman wrote: 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 am afraid that it is YOU who are bullshitting! Let me remind you of the facts when the news first broke: 1) There was a scrapie-like disease that was MUCH more aggressive, was widespread in cattle and had been seen in humans. 2) This was believed to be a variant of scrapie that had crossed the species boundary and mutated, due to the practice of feeding processed sheep offal to cattle. 3) The agent was known to be unaffected by cooking. 4) It was known to be mainly in the central nervous system, but there was good evidence that it also occurred in musculature and in milk. 5) We didn't have a clue what proportion of the UK cattle herd was infected, and educated guesses ranged from 0.1% to 99%. 6) We didn't have a clue of how infectious it was, or how soon after infection it could be transmitted, either in cattle or humans. 7) We didn't have a clue about how long its symptoms took to develop, except that it was not a matter of months. 8) We had no test except an autopsy, and even that was very unreliable except in advanced cases. The nightmare scenario was that it was highly infectious, but very slow developing. If that were the case, 99% of the UK cattle herd could have been infected, possibly 70% of the UK human population, but the symptoms wouldn't peak in the latter for 2-3 decades. The optimal scenario was that it wasn't very infectious at all, and a large proportion of infected subjects showed symptoms within a couple of years. There was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to distinguish this one in plausibility from the nightmare scenario. The government was attempting to ignore the problem, and to carry on, but the experts used the the press-induced hysteria to force it to (a) stop feeding ruminant protein to ruminants and (b) investigate vCJD as a matter of urgency. They were right to do so. What evidence do YOU have that the optimal scenario (which seems to be the case) could have been determined to be more plausible than the nightmare one USING ONLY INFORMATION AVAILABLE AT THE TIME. 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. ... I did. I also extracted the information from them and did my own analysis. Nature's statistical quality is traditionally awful, so I obviously didn't rely on any conclusions published there. Regards, Nick Maclaren. |
#6
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Compost Heap. Horse Manure. Pathogens.
wrote:
In article , Jeff Layman wrote: 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 am afraid that it is YOU who are bullshitting! Let me remind you of the facts when the news first broke: 1) There was a scrapie-like disease that was MUCH more aggressive, was widespread in cattle and had been seen in humans. I assume you are referring to nvCJD. Yes, BSE was much more aggressive in cattle, but by putting that phrase "and had been seen in humans" in the same sentence you are drawing an unsubstantiated conclusion that the disease is much more aggressive in humans. Even if the BSE prion and nvCJD prion are the same (I have not checked this) can the conclusion be drawn that they behave identically in cattle and humans? 2) This was believed to be a variant of scrapie that had crossed the species boundary and mutated, due to the practice of feeding processed sheep offal to cattle. 3) The agent was known to be unaffected by cooking. 4) It was known to be mainly in the central nervous system, but there was good evidence that it also occurred in musculature and in milk. 5) We didn't have a clue what proportion of the UK cattle herd was infected, and educated guesses ranged from 0.1% to 99%. How can you use the term "educated guess" and "ranged from 0.1% to 99%"? Why is a smiley missing from the end of that sentence? 6) We didn't have a clue of how infectious it was, or how soon after infection it could be transmitted, either in cattle or humans. 7) We didn't have a clue about how long its symptoms took to develop, except that it was not a matter of months. 8) We had no test except an autopsy, and even that was very unreliable except in advanced cases. So why draw only the worst conclusions? It's like multiplying all degrees of error together to come up with the worst possible outcome. The nightmare scenario was that it was highly infectious, but very slow developing. If that were the case, 99% of the UK cattle herd could have been infected, possibly 70% of the UK human population, but the symptoms wouldn't peak in the latter for 2-3 decades. No, even though it was highly infectious in cattle, nothingcould be concluded about its infectivity in humans. And based on the lack of transmission of scrapie to humans, despite sheep brains being on the menu for years, why draw the unobvious conclusion about the BSE agent? Or are you making a kuru comparison? If so why the latter and not the former? The optimal scenario was that it wasn't very infectious at all, and a large proportion of infected subjects showed symptoms within a couple of years. There was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to distinguish this one in plausibility from the nightmare scenario. Sorry, I don't understand what you are saying here. If a large proportion of infected subjects showed symptoms within a couple of years, isn't that a nightmare scenario - early onset disease and no cure? Delay for 30+ years might mean a cure being found in the interim. The government was attempting to ignore the problem, and to carry on, but the experts used the the press-induced hysteria to force it to (a) stop feeding ruminant protein to ruminants and (b) investigate vCJD as a matter of urgency. They were right to do so. Here we are in agreement. But I am not sure if the Government was acting only in what they do well at - ignorance - rather than being totally malign. What evidence do YOU have that the optimal scenario (which seems to be the case) could have been determined to be more plausible than the nightmare one USING ONLY INFORMATION AVAILABLE AT THE TIME. I no longer have access to the original papers, but this is from a review paper by Peter Campbell on BSE/MCD (Med Principles Pract 1998;7:172-186). It is thus only a couple of years on from the original papers on the subject. (http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB...rtikelNr=26039) "In view of the long incubation period of 5-10 years for nvCJD, based largely on the assumption that the greatest chance of people eating infected beef was between 1980 and 1988 when the ban on MBM was instituted, no sound estimate could be given of the likely scale of the epidemic of nvCJD, but the possibility was mentioned that it could run into thousands of cases. Fortunately, so far the worst predictions have not been fulfilled since the number of new cases is about 1 per month with a total to date of 23." Note: "...no sound estimate could be given of the likely scale of the epidemic of nvCJD, but the possibility was mentioned that it could run into thousands of cases...". So here, only a couple of years on from the original publications, we have a reviewer noting the connection between "no sound estimate" and that the "worst predictions have not been fulfilled". So why was an "epidemic" and "thousands of cases" mentioned when it was not possible to give a sound estimate? Because the "worst possible scenario" sells papers. And of course the journal paper gets referenced many times (useful if you are after a DSc. of course). That's the point I am trying to make. Yes, based on the worst possible case we could all be mad and/or dead now. But previous experience (The Plague, Spanish flu, HIV/AIDS) shows that the worst possible scenario just doesn't happen. And that's when we have good information about a disease - not surmise upon surmise. It wasn't science as it should be, carefully peer reviewed; it was "jump on the bandwagon" stuff. At the time, one scientist, Professor Richard Lacey, was quoted as saying that "due to BSE, in the years to come our hospitals will be filled with thousands of people going slowly and painfully mad before dying". So what new evidence did Lacey have that the Southwood Report did not have only a year earlier? The Southwood Report may have been derided for its comment that the risk to human health (from BSE) was remote, but the report did include certain caveats as to the risk to humans if certain assumptions were to be proven incorrect. What's Lacey's excuse, or was he quoted incorrectly? Where are these thousands of people going mad and dying? 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. ... I did. I also extracted the information from them and did my own analysis. Nature's statistical quality is traditionally awful, so I obviously didn't rely on any conclusions published there. I can't comment on Nature's statistical quality, but obviously someone believed them. And what did your analyses show? If based on the sort of information you alluded to in point 4 above, was there any point in doing them? Regards, Nick Maclaren. -- Jeff |
#7
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Compost Heap. Horse Manure. Pathogens.
"Jeff Layman" wrote in message ... wrote: In article , Jeff Layman wrote: 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 am afraid that it is YOU who are bullshitting! Let me remind you of the facts when the news first broke: 1) There was a scrapie-like disease that was MUCH more aggressive, was widespread in cattle and had been seen in humans. I assume you are referring to nvCJD. Yes, BSE was much more aggressive in cattle, but by putting that phrase "and had been seen in humans" in the same sentence you are drawing an unsubstantiated conclusion that the disease is much more aggressive in humans. Even if the BSE prion and nvCJD prion are the same (I have not checked this) can the conclusion be drawn that they behave identically in cattle and humans? 2) This was believed to be a variant of scrapie that had crossed the species boundary and mutated, due to the practice of feeding processed sheep offal to cattle. 3) The agent was known to be unaffected by cooking. 4) It was known to be mainly in the central nervous system, but there was good evidence that it also occurred in musculature and in milk. 5) We didn't have a clue what proportion of the UK cattle herd was infected, and educated guesses ranged from 0.1% to 99%. How can you use the term "educated guess" and "ranged from 0.1% to 99%"? Why is a smiley missing from the end of that sentence? 6) We didn't have a clue of how infectious it was, or how soon after infection it could be transmitted, either in cattle or humans. 7) We didn't have a clue about how long its symptoms took to develop, except that it was not a matter of months. 8) We had no test except an autopsy, and even that was very unreliable except in advanced cases. So why draw only the worst conclusions? It's like multiplying all degrees of error together to come up with the worst possible outcome. The nightmare scenario was that it was highly infectious, but very slow developing. If that were the case, 99% of the UK cattle herd could have been infected, possibly 70% of the UK human population, but the symptoms wouldn't peak in the latter for 2-3 decades. No, even though it was highly infectious in cattle, nothingcould be concluded about its infectivity in humans. And based on the lack of transmission of scrapie to humans, despite sheep brains being on the menu for years, why draw the unobvious conclusion about the BSE agent? Or are you making a kuru comparison? If so why the latter and not the former? The optimal scenario was that it wasn't very infectious at all, and a large proportion of infected subjects showed symptoms within a couple of years. There was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to distinguish this one in plausibility from the nightmare scenario. Sorry, I don't understand what you are saying here. If a large proportion of infected subjects showed symptoms within a couple of years, isn't that a nightmare scenario - early onset disease and no cure? Delay for 30+ years might mean a cure being found in the interim. The government was attempting to ignore the problem, and to carry on, but the experts used the the press-induced hysteria to force it to (a) stop feeding ruminant protein to ruminants and (b) investigate vCJD as a matter of urgency. They were right to do so. Here we are in agreement. But I am not sure if the Government was acting only in what they do well at - ignorance - rather than being totally malign. What evidence do YOU have that the optimal scenario (which seems to be the case) could have been determined to be more plausible than the nightmare one USING ONLY INFORMATION AVAILABLE AT THE TIME. I no longer have access to the original papers, but this is from a review paper by Peter Campbell on BSE/MCD (Med Principles Pract 1998;7:172-186). It is thus only a couple of years on from the original papers on the subject. (http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB...rtikelNr=26039) "In view of the long incubation period of 5-10 years for nvCJD, based largely on the assumption that the greatest chance of people eating infected beef was between 1980 and 1988 when the ban on MBM was instituted, no sound estimate could be given of the likely scale of the epidemic of nvCJD, but the possibility was mentioned that it could run into thousands of cases. Fortunately, so far the worst predictions have not been fulfilled since the number of new cases is about 1 per month with a total to date of 23." Note: "...no sound estimate could be given of the likely scale of the epidemic of nvCJD, but the possibility was mentioned that it could run into thousands of cases...". So here, only a couple of years on from the original publications, we have a reviewer noting the connection between "no sound estimate" and that the "worst predictions have not been fulfilled". So why was an "epidemic" and "thousands of cases" mentioned when it was not possible to give a sound estimate? Because the "worst possible scenario" sells papers. And of course the journal paper gets referenced many times (useful if you are after a DSc. of course). That's the point I am trying to make. Yes, based on the worst possible case we could all be mad and/or dead now. But previous experience (The Plague, Spanish flu, HIV/AIDS) shows that the worst possible scenario just doesn't happen. And that's when we have good information about a disease - not surmise upon surmise. It wasn't science as it should be, carefully peer reviewed; it was "jump on the bandwagon" stuff. At the time, one scientist, Professor Richard Lacey, was quoted as saying that "due to BSE, in the years to come our hospitals will be filled with thousands of people going slowly and painfully mad before dying". So what new evidence did Lacey have that the Southwood Report did not have only a year earlier? The Southwood Report may have been derided for its comment that the risk to human health (from BSE) was remote, but the report did include certain caveats as to the risk to humans if certain assumptions were to be proven incorrect. What's Lacey's excuse, or was he quoted incorrectly? Where are these thousands of people going mad and dying? 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. ... I did. I also extracted the information from them and did my own analysis. Nature's statistical quality is traditionally awful, so I obviously didn't rely on any conclusions published there. I can't comment on Nature's statistical quality, but obviously someone believed them. And what did your analyses show? If based on the sort of information you alluded to in point 4 above, was there any point in doing them? Regards, Nick Maclaren. -- Jeff yawn! |
#8
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Compost Heap. Horse Manure. Pathogens.
This is getting ridiculous, so I shall not continue after this.
In article , Jeff Layman wrote: 1) There was a scrapie-like disease that was MUCH more aggressive, was widespread in cattle and had been seen in humans. I assume you are referring to nvCJD. Yes, BSE was much more aggressive in cattle, but by putting that phrase "and had been seen in humans" in the same sentence you are drawing an unsubstantiated conclusion that the disease is much more aggressive in humans. Even if the BSE prion and nvCJD prion are the same (I have not checked this) can the conclusion be drawn that they behave identically in cattle and humans? That is close to trolling. No, I didn't draw that conclusion, and I didn't even imply it. I said that it was much more aggressive than scrapie, which it was. If I recall, the VERY few human cases were a lot more aggressive than the few cases where 'normal' scrapie had been observed in cattle. Obviously, no conclusion could be drawn, most especially not the one you seem so keen on (i.e. that it was not going to be aggressive in humans). The real experts said that they didn't have a clue. 5) We didn't have a clue what proportion of the UK cattle herd was infected, and educated guesses ranged from 0.1% to 99%. How can you use the term "educated guess" and "ranged from 0.1% to 99%"? Why is a smiley missing from the end of that sentence? Because I said what I meant and I meant what I said. I am not going to give a seminar on parameter estimation, but educated guesses are what experts use when they have to make an estimate based on very incomplete data. It's a perfectly valid statistical technique, though a bit beyond most scientists. 8) We had no test except an autopsy, and even that was very unreliable except in advanced cases. So why draw only the worst conclusions? It's like multiplying all degrees of error together to come up with the worst possible outcome. I didn't, nor did any expert I read. I could respond to you by: So why draw only the best conclusions? It's like multiplying all degrees of error together to come up with the best possible outcome. But a more informed answer is that people who have to take serious decisions use the appropriate analysis (based on game theory), where the risk is the probability of an outcome multiplied by its cost. Only politicians and other ignoramuses rely solely on the probability. In particular, the cost of the worst plausible scenario combined with a laisser faire attitude (as you are saying should have been adopted) was horrific. The probability of the worst case was low, but the risk of the combination was huge. The optimal scenario was that it wasn't very infectious at all, and a large proportion of infected subjects showed symptoms within a couple of years. There was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to distinguish this one in plausibility from the nightmare scenario. Sorry, I don't understand what you are saying here. If a large proportion of infected subjects showed symptoms within a couple of years, isn't that a nightmare scenario - early onset disease and no cure? Delay for 30+ years might mean a cure being found in the interim. No. Because it would mean that only a small proportion of people were infected. Even in the early days, we knew that it was a few years (about 5?) from first symptoms to death. If the first symptoms didn't show for 30+ years in most people, it could mean that the majority of the UK was infected. Yes, a cure MIGHT be found. But relying on fairy godmothers isn't something that any competent person does. What evidence do YOU have that the optimal scenario (which seems to be the case) could have been determined to be more plausible than the nightmare one USING ONLY INFORMATION AVAILABLE AT THE TIME. I no longer have access to the original papers, but this is from a review paper by Peter Campbell on BSE/MCD (Med Principles Pract 1998;7:172-186). It is thus only a couple of years on from the original papers on the subject. "In view of the long incubation period of 5-10 years for nvCJD, based largely on the assumption that the greatest chance of people eating infected beef was between 1980 and 1988 when the ban on MBM was instituted, no sound estimate could be given of the likely scale of the epidemic of nvCJD, but the possibility was mentioned that it could run into thousands of cases. Fortunately, so far the worst predictions have not been fulfilled since the number of new cases is about 1 per month with a total to date of 23." Aargh! That paper was TEN BLOODY YEARS after the action was taken! Yes, BY THEN, we knew that the nightmare scenario was implausible. But why do you claim that was obvious in 1986-1988? Given what we know now, if the government had not been pressured into acting until 1998, the problem would be something like ten times worse (not a major issue). But, BASED ON THE INFORMATION AVAILABLE IN 1987, we had NO reason to believe the best plausible scenario over the worst plausible one (or conversely). And, if the latter had been the case, a ten year delay would have been CATASTROPHIC. Regards, Nick Maclaren. |
#9
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Compost Heap. Horse Manure. Pathogens.
As I teach my students "a scientist who is speaking outside his area of expertise is
no better than a layman". MCD is in my area of expertise, and MCD lacked several characteristics necessary to become a pandemic. People tend to think of viruses and bacteria as static or "simple". But microbes spent most of evolution, some 3.5 billion years evolving those genes that survive to this day, those same genes with which all higher life forms are built. Because bacteria and viruses have a single genome (and many viruses are RNA viruses anyway) they mutate at extremely high rates. For this reason there are always small numbers of them that are on the "cutting edge" of infectivity if not ahead of host immunity. They are inherently unstable. MCD is an infectious protein (prion). It does not rapidly mutate and transmission is difficult within species and very difficult outside of species. It is called other names in other animals and the only place it is rampant is in mink because after taking the fur the body of the mink is processed into food for growing mink. The only place it USED to be rampant was in those small populations of humans who ate the brains of family members for ritual reasons. Now that has stopped so has Kuru. Ingrid On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 10:47:29 +0100, "Jeff Layman" wrote: 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. Somewhere between zone 5 and 6 tucked along the shore of Lake Michigan on the council grounds of the Fox, Mascouten, Potawatomi, and Winnebago |
#10
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Compost Heap. Horse Manure. Pathogens.
wrote in message ... "As I teach my students "a scientist ....... MCD is an infectious protein (prion). ........... The only place it USED to be rampant was in those small populations of humans who ate the brains of family members for ritual reasons. Now that has stopped so has Kuru." Ingrid Not to get into your debates here, but I would like some info/leads on the groups where this was rampant. TIA Gunner |
#11
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Compost Heap. Horse Manure. Pathogens.
In article ss,
"gunner" wrote: wrote in message ... "As I teach my students "a scientist ....... MCD is an infectious protein (prion). ........... The only place it USED to be rampant was in those small populations of humans who ate the brains of family members for ritual reasons. Now that has stopped so has Kuru." Ingrid Not to get into your debates here, but I would like some info/leads on the groups where this was rampant. TIA Gunner New Guinea See: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Ste...393061310/ref= pd_bxgy_b_text_b -- - Billy "For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death." - Rachel Carson http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7843430.stm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI29wVQN8Go |
#12
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Compost Heap. Horse Manure. Pathogens.
"Wild Billy" wrote in message ... In article ss, "gunner" wrote: wrote in message ... "As I teach my students "a scientist ....... The only place it USED to be rampant was in those small populations of humans ,,,,,,," New Guinea The New Guinea cannibal tribes? how disappointing, but thank you for the information anyway, although I do have to tell you there are better information sources than the Amazon book buying hype, unless you are getting paid for hits. |
#13
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Compost Heap. Horse Manure. Pathogens.
The Fore of Papua, New Guinea.
On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 08:51:44 -0700, "gunner" wrote: Not to get into your debates here, but I would like some info/leads on the groups where this was rampant. TIA Gunner Somewhere between zone 5 and 6 tucked along the shore of Lake Michigan on the council grounds of the Fox, Mascouten, Potawatomi, and Winnebago |
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