Engineered Cow immune to Mad Cow disease

www.washingtonpost.com...

Scientists said yesterday that they have used genetic engineering techniques to produce the first cattle that may be biologically incapable of getting mad cow disease.

The animals, which lack a gene that is crucial to the disease's progression, were not designed for use as food. They were created so that human pharmaceuticals can be made in their blood without the danger that those products might get contaminated with the infectious agent that causes mad cow.

Excellent news! Unfortunately we probably won't be seeing these on the dinner plate any time soon, but it's a good start.

good news indeed.

But yeah, It will likely be awhile before this will have any impact.

Kind of sick if true.

From what I remember Mad Cow was from giving the cows other cows brains, etc. to munch on.

So instead of feeding it a healthy, non GMO diet, lets mutate the cows so that we can slop canibal food to the cows and they wont get sick from it...yeah, we have a solution once again. (God help us all science is wasted...)

Peace

dAlen

Uhh, this technique doesn't get rid of the Prions, it just makes them immune to them. If we consume this, we would risk the same thing as before. This research will most likely be used to create a BSe Vaccine for US to use.

[edit on 3-1-2007 by sardion2000]

Originally posted by sardion2000
Uhh, this technique doesn't get rid of the Prions, it just makes them immune to them. If we consume this, we would risk the same thing as before. This research will most likely be used to create a BSe Vaccine for US to use.

[edit on 3-1-2007 by sardion2000]

Interesting still...they are immune, but you can still catch it from them, but yet they can help in the vaccine. I will leave it be if Im still off with it.

My point is get to the root...go organic, dont see Wholefoods suffering from the whole mad cow mess. Yes I support nature, and organic, and not mutated foods that eat their own kind.

Good post, interesting to keep up with modern mad day science.

Peace

dAlen

it's a valid experiment, but the experience with GM crops is sobering, i don't see why animals would be any different (if the same techniques are used). besides, that's like taking anti-enflammatory drugs to combat allergies, i'd rather eliminate the cause than go chasing side effects of the latest wonder cure, but i'm probably a sceptic.

PS: i'm not trying to spread FUD here, it's just that far too many empty promises have been made wrt GMOs, so broad claims of immunity shouldn't be taken at face value.

source
While Monsanto walked away with its first year profits from selling prohibitively expensive inferior seeds, the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) in India gets ready to accord approval to yet another strain(s) of Bt cotton for the northwestern parts of the country and too after a hurridly conducted one-year of farm trials. Cotton farmers, in the bargain, have been left high and dry.

That in the very first year of commercial planting, Bt cotton should be faced with American bollworm attack (the insect against which it is supposedly resistant), is a clear pointer to the fact that the science/technology was not at all perfect. Bt cotton has also seen an increased infestation of other sucking pests. The crop came under an increased attack of wilt disease and of course has proved to be a water guzzler. And as far as the economics is concerned, it has gone wrong everywhere.

The paranoid part of my brain wonders if Mad Cow Disease (TM) was a genetically engineered disease, to kill off all the free cows owned by small-time farmers, who will then be forced to buy "Cowz(TM)" if they want to stay in business.

It's like the idea of hybrid wheat. Wheat is a grass. A small-time farmer (you) can grow it and exchange with the neighbors for free. The hybridized varieties are trade-marked, and must be purchased every planting season.

Once all the cows are dead, farmers will buy patented ceborgcows(TM).

Next, they start in on dogs and cats. Then it'll be people(TM).

[edit on 3-1-2007 by dr_strangecraft]

Already covered twice on ATS:

Genetically Engineered Mad-Cow Resistance
Genetically-Engineered Cattle May Defeat Prions

But FYI:

There is a campaign to narrow the definition of "prion" to include only one particular protein - a 33–35 kD protein - coded for by one specific gene on the short arm of chromosome 20.

In fact however, the world is full of prions...

Here are a few quick definitions that have not yet been censored:

Protein infectious agent associated with several neurological diseases (scrapie; kuru; Creutzfeld-Jakob syndrome; Alzheimer's disease). Each disease has a different prion.

***

Prion: A disease-causing agent that is neither bacterial nor fungal nor viral and contains no genetic material. A prion is a protein that occurs normally in a harmless form. By folding into an aberrant shape, the normal prion turns into a rogue agent. It then coopts other normal prions to become rogue prions.

Prions have been held responsible for a number of degenerative brain diseases, including scrapie (a fatal disease of sheep and goats), mad cow disease, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, fatal familial insomnia, kuru, an unusual form of hereditary dementia known as Gertsmann-Straeussler-Scheinker disease, and possibly some cases of Alzheimer's disease.

Dr. Stanley B. Prusiner received the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of prions. See also: Prusiner, Stanley B..

***

prion (plural prions)

1. The etiologic agent of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. The only self-replicating cause of disease known to lack nucleic acids.
2. A self-propagating alternative conformer of any protein.

***

cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk...]prion - The word, for proteinaceous infectious agent, was coined in 1982 by neurologist Stanley Prusiner as part of a hypothesis regarding ailments bearing aetiologic resemblance to those caused by slow viruses (for instance, kuru). The hypothesis has been borne out by investigation. Prions are now believed responsible for several transmissible neurodegenerative diseases

Also FYI

Human drugs and vaccines are manufactured using U.S. cattle and cattle products.

Continued profitability, and avoiding liability lawsuits, depends on convincing people that the process is safe, always was safe, and always will be safe - that prion diseases like Mad Cow are "genetic," only affect the brain, and are NOT a problem in the USA. All systems go.

...U.S. herd an ideal resource for companies that extract blood and other products from cattle for use in human pharmaceuticals.

...it may not be necessary for Hematech to use prion-free cattle as it strives to make potent, disease-killing antibodies in cattle for use in humans with life-threatening infections.

Misfolded prion proteins are blamed for BSE and other, similar brain diseases. It is known that certain genetic variations make animals more susceptible to the diseases.

Sorry. It's NOT safe.

Drug and vaccine manufacturing processes don't just spread infectious prions - standard manufacturing processes create new infectious prion strains.

This is common knowledge in the scientific world. It is the reason for running a mega-billion dollar fifty-year marketing campaign to say prions don't exist. It is the reason the FBI destroyed Linus Pauling's reputation in the early 1950's - and it's the reason Stanley Prusiner had to wait 20 years to get a Nobel Peace Prize for 'discovering' infectious prions.

Everyone who knows anything about proteins knows they misfold and create infectious prions. Everyone who knows anything about the pharmaceutical industry knows they've been targeting proteins since Pauling discovered the actin protein's "a" and "b" configurations in 1950 - and the processes and products have been creating new prion strains since then. And everyone knows that the chronic disease epidemic results from infectious prions created by industry. They just don't talk about it publicly - or they'd be destroyed financially or professionally, or fatally mugged, or charged with treason.

It's NOT safe to use animals products to create drugs - and it's common scientific knowledge.

But these processes continue to be used, and the products remain on the market because the standard analysis says the 'benefits' outweigh the 'risks.'

But the standard "risk-benefit analysis" is NOT scientific or medical - it's economic. And it's dead wrong - as evidenced by the rising costs of Social Security, and health related unemployment and disability payouts.

Prion-related diseases usually take decades to cause symptoms; so the big boyz bet on everyone dying before they got too sick to work. But guess what? It didn't happen that way. Now prion-related diseases are pandemic and still spreading, and killing every national economy because they do not kill their victims, they just render them unproductive.

So when all the nation-states go broke supporting all their prion-infected disabled citizens, who here thinks the corporate-states are in position and ready to run with the ball?



Also see:

Mad Cow Madness

Prion Contaminated Vaccines

one question for everyone: Who is even testing for deformed proteins (aka prions) in, say, foodstuffs and cosmetics?

iirc, GMOs are tested by DNA sequencing (even if incomplete), proteins are not scrutinized at all. out of sight - out of mind ?

suspected example: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by Long Lance
one question for everyone: Who is even testing for deformed proteins (aka prions) in, say, foodstuffs and cosmetics?

iirc, GMOs are tested by DNA sequencing (even if incomplete), proteins are not scrutinized at all. out of sight - out of mind ?

suspected example: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Thanks Long Lance. Important heads up.

And sorry - I sometimes tend to take your contributions for granted.

You have voted Long Lance for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.