British Wrongly Lulled People on 'Mad Cow,' Report Finds

[Guest guest]

What are the two biggest lies?

 

1: "The check is in the mail."

 

2: "I am from the government and I am here to help you."

 

For more on number 2 read on....

 

 

 

October 27, 2000

 

 

British Wrongly Lulled People on 'Mad Cow,' Report Finds

By SARAH LYALL

ONDON, Oct. 26 — For 10 years, British officials consistently misled the

public by deliberately playing down the possibility that mad-cow disease

could be transmitted to humans, an official report said today.

 

The 4,000-page report, published after a three-year investigation, took care

not to single out individuals for blame in its chronicle of government

missteps and misstatements.

 

But its authors, led by Lord Phillips, severely criticized the "culture of

secrecy" that characterized the government's response to a crisis that has

wreaked havoc with Britain's once-proud beef industry, forced the slaughter

of almost four million cows and led to the deaths so far of 77 Britons.

 

In its effort not to alarm consumers, the report said, the government sought

to insulate them from unpleasant information, using "an approach whose

object was sedation."

 

Acknowledging its own responsibility for the human suffering, the Labor

government said it would pay victims' medical costs and compensate their

families. Farmers have already got billions for the destruction of their

herds.

 

The disease is thought to be caused by putting animal protein into cow feed,

a practice since banned.

 

In addition to the 77 who have died, seven people are known to be suffering

from the human form of mad- cow disease, a variant of Creutzfeldt- Jakob

disease that results in progressive dementia and loss of physical functions,

leaving the brain with a spongelike consistency. Mad-cow disease —

technically bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or B.S.E. — is always fatal.

 

Officials said they still had no way of knowing how many Britons were likely

to come down with the disease.

 

Government officials say they are now confident that after the strict

slaughter program, the disease has been all but eradicated from British

herds. But Creutzfeldt-Jakob can have an extremely long incubation — 25

years or more — and people who ate infected beef in the early 1980's may be

still at risk.

 

"My own personal belief would be that we are more likely looking in the

region of a few hundred to several thousand more" victims, Prof. Peter

Smith, acting head of the government's advisory committee on the disease,

said on television this morning. "But it must be said we can't rule out tens

of thousands."

 

A former Conservative prime minister, John Major, who in 1995 told the House

of Commons there "is no scientific evidence that B.S.E. can be transmitted

to humans or that eating beef causes it in humans," responded to the report

by saying, "All of us must accept our responsibilities for shortcomings."

 

Tim Yeo, the agriculture spokesman for the Conservatives, the party in power

during the decade covered by the report, told Parliament, "I am truly sorry

for what happened, and I apologize."

 

But apologies — even coupled with compensation — are not enough, said Roger

Tomkins, whose daughter, Clare, died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob in April 1998,

at 24. The public's trust had been "betrayed to save money," Mr. Tomkins

said.

 

The first diagnosis of mad-cow disease was made in 1986, when afflicted cows

began to behave strangely and die suddenly. For the next decade, officials

assured a worried public that there was no evidence the disease could spread

to humans. All the while, today's report pointed out, there were mounting

indications to the contrary.

 

According to the report, produced at a cost of $42 million, the government

failed to inform the public about the new evidence because of "a consuming

fear of provoking an irrational public scare."

 

It was this fear, the report adds, that caused a government veterinary

pathologist to label "confidential" his first memo on mad-cow disease in

1986; that led John Gummer, then the agriculture minister, to make a show of

publicly feeding a hamburger to his 4-year-old daughter, Cordelia, in 1990;

and that led Britain's chief medical officer in 1996 to declare, "I myself

will continue to eat beef as part of a varied and balanced diet."

 

At the same time, government policy was marred by bureaucratic bungling, a

lack of coordination between departments and the fact that the Ministry of

Agriculture, Fisheries and Food had two somewhat contradictory missions: to

protect consumers and to support the beef industry.