Unexplained cattle deaths & emergence of major TSE epidemic in N AMerica

[Guest guest]

 

KD Weber <wvadreamin

 

Wednesday, 31 December 2003 11:39

Unexplained cattle deaths & emergence of major TSE epidemic in N

AMerica

 

 

 

Unexplained Cattle Deaths

And The Emergence Of A Major

TSE Epidemic in North America

National Institute for Discovery Science

nids

 

http://www.rense.com/general46/manya.html

12-30-3

 

 

Note - Because of the length of this outstanding report and that it

is in a 'pdf' format, many may not read it all or successfully access the

file. Therefore, I am posting several excerpts here which, hopefully, will

encourage more to access and carefully read this entire precedent-setting

scientific work... -ed

 

Abstract

 

We present evidence that a correlation exists between reports of

animal mutilation and the emergence of a Transmissible Spongiform

Encephalopathy (TSE) epidemic in North America.

 

* We show that sharp instruments are used in animal mutilations. Our

data contradict the conclusions of the 1980 Rommel Report that claimed

predators and scavengers could explain reports of cattle mutilations.

 

* Using data obtained from a NIDS nationwide survey of bovine

veterinarian practitioners, we show that certain organs are preferentially

removed during animal mutilations.

 

* We focus attention on the temporal and geographical overlaps

between the animal mutilation and TSE epidemics in NE Colorado. The most

highly publicized TSE epidemic in North America, chronic wasting disease

(CWD), emerged in NE Colorado in the late 1960s.

 

* We show evidence that patterns of animal mutilations conform to

covert but classical wild life sampling methodologies for infectious

diseases.

 

* We show evidence in support of an epidemic of prion disease that

is both subclinical in cattle and clinical in deer/elk in North America.

 

* We describe evidence from two laboratories that a number of prion

diseases in humans are misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's disease and therefore

currently escape detection.

 

* The historical record shows that high levels of infectious TSEs

were imported from New Guinea into research facilities at Fort Detrick and

Bethesda, Maryland after 1958 and were used for intensive cross-species

infectivity experiments.

 

* We hypothesize that animal mutilations represent both a

TSE-disease sampling operation on domestic animals AND a graphic warning

that the beef and venison food chain is compromised.

 

Overall, the evidence suggests that animal mutilations are a

long-term, covert, prion disease sampling operation by unknown perpetrators

who are aware of a substantial contamination of the beef and venison food

supply. Although this paper presents evidence in favor of a motive for

animal mutilations, there is still insufficient evidence to identify the

perpetrators.

 

The hypotheses described in this paper yield a number of testable

predictions. Examining these predictions in the coming months and years is

increasingly urgent because they have considerable public health

implications. Secondly the recent (May 2003) announcement of a case of

mad-cow disease in Alberta, Canada has brought the issue of the

contamination of the human food chain into sharper focus.

 

Introduction

 

Cases of unexplained cattle deaths, also known as animal

mutilations, are characterized by the deliberate removal of organs from

domestic and wild animals by unknown perpetrators. Testimony from veterinary

pathologists, law enforcement officials and cattle inspectors clearly

distinguish animal mutilations from death of domestic and wild animals by

infectious disease, predation, and other natural causes (1). The phenomenon

has been unsuccessfully investigated by law enforcement and by a variety of

researchers since the early 1970s. Animal mutilations emerged into the glare

of media attention beginning in the late 1960s, intensified in the 1970s and

since then have waxed and waned in intensity. Although animal mutilation

research has been immersed in a miasma of wild speculation, false claims and

unscientific methodology, there is considerable evidence that the phenomenon

is real.

 

The two central and unanswered questions that have dogged research

into this phenomenon are (a) Who and (b) Why? The purpose of the present

paper is to focus on the second question and to review evidence suggesting a

link between the intense animal mutilation waves of the 1970s/1980s and the

emergence of an epidemic of infectious disease in North America during and

after this period. The issue of the contamination of the North American food

supply by an infectious prion agent has come into sharper focus since the

announcement in May 2003 by Canadian authorities of a confirmed case of mad

cow disease in Alberta, Canada. This paper hypothesizes that patterns of

animal mutilations are consistent with a covert infectious disease

monitoring operation in the United States and elsewhere. It is not the

purpose of this paper to ask the question: " who is killing and mutilating

the animals " ?

 

Results-Discussion

 

Lines of Evidence Suggesting the Animal Mutilation-TSE Linkage

 

1. NE Colorado was a Major Animal Mutilation Epicenter 1975-1977 In

a two-year period, (1975-77) in two Colorado counties alone, there were

nearly two hundred reports of mutilated cattle (1). Governor Richard D. Lamm

flew to Pueblo Colorado on Sept 4, 1975 to confer with the executive board

of the Cattlemen's Association about the mutilations, which he called " one

of the greatest outrages in the history of the western cattle industry. " The

Governor added, " it is no longer possible to blame predators for the

mutilations " (2). In the 1970s, in addition to the scores of cases in NE

Colorado, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of animal mutilation reports were

investigated by local law enforcement with cases occurring in 15 states,

from South Dakota and Montana to New Mexico and Texas.

 

2. Since 1981, NE Colorado has been the epicenter of a CWD epidemic

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a prion associated neurodegenerative

disease that is a part of a larger family of fatal conditions that include

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle, scrapie in sheep and

sporadic and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (sCJD or vCJD)/kuru in humans

(3). Prion diseases are described in more detail below.

 

CWD afflicts mule deer, white-tailed deer and American elk (waipiti)

in several states and in Canada. CWD was first seen in 1967 in captive deer

at a Colorado State University research station in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Shortly after the animal mutilation epidemic in NE Colorado died down,

beginning in 1981, cases of CWD were found in free-ranging deer and elk,

initially only in areas in northeastern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming.

Recently, however, surveys in Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska have documented

an astoundingly high CWD prevalence in some wild deer herds (3). By February

2003, additional CWD cases have been documented in Kansas, Minnesota, Utah,

Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Saskatchewan and

Alberta, Canada. In spite of strenuous culling efforts by state wildlife

agencies, CWD appears to be spreading rapidly.

 

3. Predators, Scavengers or Sharp Instruments?

 

An oft-cited study throughout the history of animal mutilation

investigations has been the famous Rommel Report. Written in 1980 by retired

FBI officer Ken Rommel, the report purports to show that simple predator and

scavenger activity was mistaken by ranchers and law enforcement officials

for " mutilations " (19). There have been numerous criticisms of this report,

not least of which was a complete lack of forensic or veterinary pathology

expertise on the part of the senior investigator. In fact, before being

appointed to head Operation Animal Mutilation, Rommel's prior career

expertise had focused on the investigation of bank robberies.

 

Rommel purportedly investigated about 20 mutilations in the state of

New Mexico during a six month period in 1979. Given that NIDS has (so far)

spent seven years continuously investigating cattle mutilations, arguably

with far greater resources than those given to the Rommel investigation, the

tiny scope and extremely short time frame of the Rommel study demolished

it's credibility as a serious scientific study. Nevertheless, the NIDS

investigations of animal mutilations in northern New Mexico have confirmed

at least one aspect of the results published in the Rommel Report. Using

veterinary pathology and bacteriology analysis, NIDS found a majority of

reported animal mutilations in northern New Mexico 1996-2002 were false

positives. Animals had died of Clostridial infection (blackleg),

under-nourishment, as a result of the inappropriate application of the

organophosphate insecticide Warbex (64) or from other natural causes.

 

The NIDS investigations found that scavengers had subsequently

attacked and devoured parts of these carcasses. Where the Rommel Report and

the NIDS analysis part ways is that NIDS has also conducted field

investigations, including necropsies and tissue sampling, of animal

mutilations in other states, including Utah, Montana, Nebraska, California,

Oregon, Washington etc. Where the Rommel investigation used a few isolated

cases of false positives in New Mexico that were gathered over an extremely

truncated time frame to generalize that all animal mutilations in the United

States were simply the result of predator or scavenger activity, it could be

argued that the NIDS approach has been more scientific. It is also

noteworthy that the Rommel Report has been widely cited by some law

enforcement groups (although, as time goes on, increasingly fewer),

university laboratories, and veterinary groups as justification for not

expending resources on investigations into animal mutilations.

 

NIDS has investigated several mutilation cases where evidence for

the use of sharp instruments was documented using veterinary pathology

techniques (20 and references therein). In this report, we will cite just

two examples; others can be found in (20).

 

*****

 

Case #1: Circumstances and Preliminary Investigation

 

March 10, 1997 ó 10:00 AM: Two ranchers on a remote pasture in NE

Utah began the daily tagging of calves born the night before. The weather

was bright and sunny, temperatures in the 50s. The ranchers estimated they

tagged and weighed the 87-pound animal about 100 yards from the fence line.

There was a ring of snow surrounding the pasture where they tagged the

animal.

 

After tagging the animal, they walked about 300 yards west to

another newborn animal and went through the process of weighing and tagging

that animal. The two were accompanied by their blue heeler dog. About 10:45

AM, the heeler began to growl and act strangely with a focus on the area

they had just left.

 

March 10 ó 10:45 AM: The blue heeler began snarling in earnest and

arching his back. Without warning, the animal ran west across the fields,

away from the direction he had been looking. The heeler was never seen

again.

 

March 10 ó 10:50 AM: The rancher and his wife, looking back, then

noticed a grown cow running frantically back and forth towards the fence

line while dragging her leg. Both then walked back to investigate. The

rancher reported seeing the recently tagged newborn calf lying eviscerated

in the field (see photos), close to where it had been tagged about 45

minutes previously. In a 45-minute period in daylight, 100 yards from any

cover, with the rancher about 200-300 yards away, the calf had most of its

body weight removed, including entrails, and appeared to have been placed

carefully on the ground with no blood present on or near the animal.

 

March 10 ó 4:00 PM: In one of the most rapid turn-around times in

NIDS' investigative history, two NIDS scientific investigators and a

veterinarian were standing over the dead calf only a few hours after

receiving the call from the rancher. The photo below (Fig 1) is an accurate

representation of how the animal was found:

 

[Figure 1. The animal was found spread-eagled on the grass with no

blood on or underneath.]

 

The investigators confirmed the eviscerated calf as reported by the

rancher. The veterinarian began the necropsy. Investigators videotaped the

necropsy and photographed the procedure. As the veterinarian performed the

necropsy, he said a sharp instrument, possibly a knife, had been used to

remove the ear. He also reported there may have been evidence of chewing on

the animal. The initial observation made by the veterinarian regarding the

use of a sharp instrument on the animal's ear (see photograph below) was

later confirmed by an independent veterinary pathology lab.

 

[Figure 2: The animal's left ear had been cleanly cut with a sharp

instrument.]

 

[Figure 3. Close-up of ear.]

 

A close-up of the ear (Figure 3) showed that the cartilage, hide and

all connective tissue had been cleanly sliced to remove the ear. A detached

femur bone from the animal was sent to one of the top forensic pathologists

in the country who confirmed that two separate sharp instruments had been

used on the bone: a heavy machete-like instrument and a smaller

scissors-like instrument.

 

Within 24 hours, an experienced tracker who makes a living tracking

game animals arrived and quartered an area nearly a mile radius from the

dead calf. No tracks were found.

 

No blood was found on or near the animal. The veterinarian who

conducted the necropsy opined the animal had been exsanguinated very

effectively. In order to test the hypothesis that blood may have seeped from

the animal into the soil, NIDS obtained about 3 liters of fresh blood (the

approximate blood volume of the exsanguinated animal, using the standard

assumption that blood is approx 7% of body weight) from the local

slaughterhouse. The blood was poured on the ground where the calf was found.

Videotapes and photographs were recorded of the blood on the ground at

regular intervals for 48 hours following the initiation of the experiment.

Even 48 hours after the blood was poured, the bright red stain of hemoglobin

was very obvious on the grass.

 

*****

 

The following is a portion of the Summary remarks at the end of the

NIDS report:

 

Why Leave the Body?

 

This question has plagued investigators ever since the first

well-publicized investigations of mutilations began back in the early 1970s.

As any reader familiar with the animal mutilation topic will agree, a

plethora of hypotheses have sprung up about the perpetrators and their

motives for animal mutilations. One of the most quoted hypotheses involves a

government operation to monitor radiation or biological warfare testing. But

the question " why leave the body? " has never been adequately answered by

these hypotheses. The government can just as easily test their own herds,

the counter-argument goes, or obtain carcasses from a slaughterhouse if they

wish to covertly monitor radiation. Thus, for this and many other reasons,

the evidence points away from the government as perpetrators of animal

mutilations.

 

Vallee (56) and Smith (57) have suggested intriguing hypotheses that

leaving the cow carcass on the ground constitutes a deliberate message. In

common with both these authors, we suggest that implicit in the deliberate

lack of an attempt to conceal the carcass on the part of the perpetrators of

animal mutilation, is a brutal warning. We suggest that attention is being

deliberately focused on the mutilated animals. Further, we suggest the

warning is that the human food chain is compromised, probably with a

prion-associated infectious agent that still remains mostly undetected.

 

 

We urge everyone to read the full report here:

(PDF file - requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)

 

http://216.128.67.116/pdf/cattledeaths_tse_epidemic.pdf