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

[Craig Brozefsky]

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 7:38 AM, Paddy Apling <e.c.apling at btinternet.com> wrote:
>  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, I hope you don't think I'm picking on you by responding to
this, as I did to the previous comment about GMO crop destruction.
That is certainly not my intention.

Anyways, I would like to point out the following:

from: <http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/bse/>

There exists strong epidemiologic and laboratory evidence for a causal
association between a new human prion disease called variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) that was first reported from the
United Kingdom in 1996 and the BSE outbreak in cattle. The interval
between the most likely period for the initial extended exposure of
the population to potentially BSE-contaminated food (1984-1986) and
the onset of initial variant CJD cases (1994-1996) is consistent with
known incubation periods for the human forms of prion disease.

Now, I have not done a literature review of this, but it would appear
that the CDC is contradicting your assertion, at least in spirit.

I would blame the media much more than the scientists for the
exaggeration and sensationalizing of these issues.  The scientists and
researchers are not innocent, as they have funding requirements too,
but often times their research and comments are cherry picked by
reporters.