[Marxism] A reply to Brian Baker on marxist.com

[Paddy Apling]

Correction - nobody has died of BSE.  Some people, have died of CJD - no 
more probably than had previously died of the disease undiagnosed of this 
previously unrecgnised wasting disease.

Remember "scientists" were quoted at the time of BSE as forecasting 
thousands, if not millions of deaths due to BSE induced CJD - but, in actual 
fact, the current findings are that the incidence in UK is no higher than in 
other countries which were never affected by the BSE outbreak in cattle.

Just another case of computer predictions and government and media hype !!

It is equally likely that the diagnosis that the cause of the BSE outbreak 
was meat and bone meal was equally wrong.  No one has ever succeeded in 
producing BSE in an animal under laboratory conditions by feeding meat and 
bone meal, only by injecting brain material, or extracts made from it, 
derived from animals suffering the diseaase into healthy animals - which is 
far from causal proof of infection from food material, or even large amounts 
of meat and bone meal..

There is much too much assumption that correlation equals cause - and of 
course it is not;  correlations merely point at possibly true causal 
connentions to investigate - and of course, if there is an alarmist tale to 
tell these are never done before ridiculous assumptions and forecasts are 
made !!

Paddy
http://apling.freeservers.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Picón Álvarez" <david at miradoiro.com>
To: <e.c.apling at btinternet.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2008 11:15 PM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] A reply to Brian Baker on marxist.com


>> Lewis Wolpert, in his recent book Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast,
>> talks about 'virtual risks', those about which science is unsure - he
>> includes global warming and BSE.
>
> How is BSE a virtual risk when people have died of it? Now I'd be the 
> first
> to admit that it is perhaps such a low risk that worrying about it is
> misallocation, and that the hysterical paranoia some people got about beef
> is completely unjustified, but the existence--if not the magnitude--of the
> risk is undeniable.
>
> --David.
>
>
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