Don't Ask Officials About New "Mad Cow" and Chronic Wasting Disease Cases

States Also Spin Chronic Wasting Disease

The same "money before people" priorities of the CDC and USDA can be seen with state Departments of Natural Resources' (DNRs) as they deal with CWD, the deer version of BSE. Just as BSE fears pummel beef markets, CWD fears deplete the hunter revenues DNRs are based on.

In 2004, Wisconsin endured a CWD epidemic with headless deer waiting in trailers to be tested before people would eat them. Some food pantries refused the potentially lethal deer meat; others gave patrons fliers with warnings.

There is no evidence that CWD in deer can infect humans say DNR officials----especially if hunters avoid the brain, eyeballs, spinal cord, spleen or lymph nodes. But, sadly, there is evidence of a deer-to-human infection path. Medical studies have identified pathways of transmission including a 2002 CDC report titled "Fatal Degenerative Neurologic Illnesses in Men Who Participated in Wild Game Feasts--Wisconsin, 2002."

This summer, the Journal Sentinel reports that "Amid renewed concern about whether chronic wasting disease can jump from deer to people, a fatal human brain condition in the same family is showing up more often in Wisconsin and nationally." There have been 13 cases of vCJD in the last four years says the Journal "a 117% increase" since 2002.

As anyone might expect, state and federal official have immediately spun the human vCJD cases. "The department believes the modest increase in the number of confirmed cases in the state is a reflection of our increased efforts to detect and confirm cases," Jennifer Miller, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, told the Journal. (Though she did admit that 52 percent of CJD cases in Wisconsin in the last five years were found in people with a history of eating venison.)

The CDC, for its part, attributes the growing brain illnesses, possibly linked to CWD in deer, "to an aging population, more awareness among neurologists and the use of the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio." Maybe they will soon call it "atypical."

A previous version of this report appear on AlterNet

[1] Concerns at Ames lab delay mad cow study

Workers at the National Animal Disease Laboratory object to how sewage is

being treated before it's released. May 19, 2006

[2] same

(Article changed on July 30, 2017 at 16:37)

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