"Soylent BSE is PEOPLE!"

[unixronin]

The latest print issue of New Scientist contains an article describing a new speculation about the original cause of BSE.  It goes like this:  An estimated 120 Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (CJD) victims per year were cremated in India during the 1960s and 1970s.  These bodies, and many others, were often incompletely cremated and dumped in rivers, from where they ended up among hundreds of thousands of tons of carcass scraps imported by the UK during those years for use in feed and fertilizer.  Healthy cows were raised on feed containing prion-infected human tissue, developed mad cow disease, and were eaten in turn by humans, who developed vCJD, closing the cycle.

If correct, the explanation is -- as New Scientist commented -- grotesque, but bitterly ironic.

India's export of carcass scraps continues, although no longer to Europe.  The carcass scraps were known even at the time to contain human remains, but were used in feed anyway.

Comments

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

yuck!