mad cow disease," which not only has wreaked havoc in the British economy but also brought fear into the hearts of the European people because man can be infected by eating contaminated meat. " />

MAD COW DISEASE


for BSE.

The problem today is that it is not known if the disease has peaked or not; and, of course, there is no cure in sight for it.

Just in case, it is important for you to read this provocative article by Benjamin and Anthony Parish offering the interesting proposition that BSE is not only not caused by prions but that it is also not transmissible--that is, you cannot get BSE by eating meat from animals that have died from the disease.

I must say that I also have problems with prions' transmissibility. Prions are proteins, and in order for the ones from cows to cause disease they have through go your gastrointestinal tract, your blood stream and cross what is called the to blood-brain barrier, whose function is to stop big molecules from going into the brain.

Now, in the GI are proteases, enzymes that destroy--digest--most of the proteins that you eat. This is one of the reasons it has not been possible to design a way to take insulin orally--it is destroyed in the GI. Insulin is a much smaller protein than prions.

Even if the prions should make it through the GI system and into the blood, they should be destroyed by your immune system; and if they survive all that, they still have to cross the blood-brain barrier, enter the cells, find the normal prions and convert them to pathogenic. Aren´t they stretching it too much?

The copyright of the article MAD COW DISEASE in Molecular Biology/Medicine is owned by Juan C. Mendible. Permission to republish MAD COW DISEASE in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Go To Page: 1 2 3 4

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic