Despite assurances to the contrary, mad cow disease and its human counterpart, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), may be more widespread than government authorities claim.

An article by Andrew Niforuk in the January 8 Toronto Globe and Mail indicates that the first North American case of mad cow probably appeared in 1985, when mink that were fed downer cattle on a Wisconsin farm went crazy and died. Richard Marsh, a veterinary pathologist at the University of Wisconsin, took samples of their brains and fed them to bull calves. The calves developed a bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)—albeit with different symptoms than the classic British BSE. These infected cows behaved sleepily, like downer cows. Marsh concluded that there must be an unrecognized BSE-like disease in U.S. cattle.

Marsh’s work was ignored for years, and his grant proposals to test more cattle were routinely denied by the government. Until his death in 1997, he continued to call for a ban on feeding cattle parts to cattle.

Niforuk’s article also cites a 1989 study by Prof. Laura Manuelidis and colleagues at Yale University. They performed autopsies on the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, and found that 13 per cent of those patients actually suffered from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. This would mean a much higher incidence of CJD than the commonly accepted figure of one in a million people.

Is this higher incidence of CJD related to mad cow disease? How safe is the meat we eat—with even USDA inspectors complaining about inadequate numbers of cattle inspected? (Typically only the downer cows, not healthy-appearing cattle, are tested.)

What about the effects of the horrendous speedup in the slaughterhouses, coupled with routine health and safety violations by the meatpacking bosses? The prions that cause mad cow disease and CJD are infectious proteins, which cannot be destroyed by ordinary methods of cleaning or disinfection.

Working people should be demanding answers to these questions before swallowing the U.S. government “bull” about the safety of U.S. beef.

Marla Puziss
Atlanta, Georgia 

 
Darryl Hunt released
On Christmas morning Darryl Hunt was freed after spending 18 years in prison here in North Carolina. Hunt, who is Black, was framed up for the 1984 rape and murder of Deborah Sykes, a young white woman.

Under pressure to find the attacker, the local police picked up Hunt, who always maintained his innocence. Witnesses who thought they might have seen the attack described a Black man who looked nothing like Hunt, and witness stories changed as police pressure increased. There was never any physical evidence linking Hunt to the attack.

Hunt was tried and convicted in June 1985. A second trial was held in October 1990 after a city manager’s report blasted the police department for shoddy work in the investigation. He was convicted again at the second trial. The county where Hunt was arrested was 25 percent Black, but the first trial had only one Black juror, the second none.

In 1994, DNA testing positively excluded Hunt as the man who had raped Sykes. Nevertheless, a motion for a third trial was denied. Then in April 2003, Hunt and his lawyers were able to get a new round of DNA testing, which compared the DNA semen found in Sykes’s body against state and federal databases. In December the DNA was matched to another man, who confessed to the rape and murder and insisted he had acted alone.

The Darryl Hunt Defense Committee had carried out support for his case for years. His supporters never gave up and were there when Hunt finally walked out of the prison, saying “It feels great…to finally be free and vindicated.”

Jane Roland
Greensboro, NC
 
 
‘Militant’ tells the truth
In response to the reader who objected to the Militant’s coverage of the anti-Bush demo in the UK: Yes, it is the duty of communists to tell the truth, in order to point the way forward for workers and other toilers.

Yes, there is a crisis of leadership in the working class: in the UK, Iraq, the U.S., and every other country in the world. This has been the case since the Stalinist gutting of the Third International. Cuba points the way.

The role of the Militant worker-correspondents can be best compared with the coverage of the Cuban medical aid to Venezuela, as compared to the December 9 NPR [National Public Radio] “Morning Edition” report. NPR’s support of liberal imperialism led their reporter to rely almost entirely on [Caracas big-business daily] El Universal. The NPR reporters said that the Venezuelan doctors were afraid to go into working-class districts. The petty bourgeois reporters from NPR were afraid to go as well.

The Militant reporters went and got the truth; they told the truth to the world.

P.L. Glace
West Springfield, Massachusetts
 

The Militant receives many requests from readers behind bars. The Prisoners Fund makes it possible to send them subscriptions at a reduced rate. A prisoner can buy a six-month subscription for $6 and a one-year subscription for $12.

The Spanish-language monthly magazine Perspectiva Mundial offers prisoners a six-month subscription for $3 and a one-year subscription for $6.

To help cover the cost of these special offers, please send a check or money order, earmarked “Prisoners Fund,” to the Militant, 306 W. 37 St., 10th Fl., New York, NY 10018.  
 
 
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