Creating Prion-Free Cows 340
Science Daily is reporting that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is reporting positive results from a recent study designed to create genetically engineered prion-free cattle. From the article: "ARS studied eight Holstein males that were developed by Hematech Inc., a pharmaceutical research company based in Sioux Falls, S.D. The evaluation of the prion-free cattle was led by veterinary medical officer Juergen Richt of ARS' National Animal Disease Center (NADC) in Ames, Iowa. The evaluation revealed no apparent developmental abnormalities in the prion-free cattle."
Dead sheeps (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dead sheeps (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dead sheeps (Score:4, Insightful)
Not quite the same disease (Score:4, Informative)
Also there *ARE* good tests to determine the ESB both faster than the biopsy and not needing to put down the cow, much better than clinical observations.
Intensive research has been done in German and Swiss laboratories. The first test working on live animal has been developped in Göttingen, Germany. Thus sadly, the information is only available in the German version of wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. (Though the german article mentions a later Texan discovery).
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BSE and CJD are very similar (same mechanism) but not exactly the sane disease (not exactly the same "diseased" protein shape), which also explains the longer incubation time.
I agree since CJD occurs spontaneously (or with genetic pre-disposition), varient CJD is determined to have very similar properties to BSE and is the one which is believed to be linked to BSE.
The first test working on live animal has been developped in Göttingen, Germany. Thus sadly, the information is only available in the German version of wikipedia. (Though the german article mentions a later Texan discovery).
My German is not strong, though I was able to get some information out of it (babelfish helped as well); these are interesting developments. Earlier in the wiki it states that Prionen cannot be proved until around 24-30 months of age and the test is 89% accurate with no false positives (quite good). My only concer
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I'm more interested in where this heads beyond the BSE scare, since it'll be a lot harde
Re:Not quite the same disease (Score:4, Funny)
Typo.
Evar.
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For what it's worth, soybean meal is the primary protein source for cattle in the US, and it has been for a long time. IIRC, Europe was the only place where they had to grind up sheep and cows for protein because soybeans don't grow very well there in general.
Or dead people (Score:5, Interesting)
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy [wikipedia.org]
This theory has some merit because scrapie from sheep does not appear to infect people, whereas BSE from cattle does.
Soylent Green... (Score:4, Informative)
In all seriousness, you make a good point. BSE was first spotted among the cannibals of Papua New Guinea (where eating of the dead was a sign of respect).
http://www.gwinnettdailyonline.com/GDP/archive/ar
Here are a ton of articles on BSE & vCJD:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/bse [newscientist.com]
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This is true but somewhat misleading. If people follow your link (thanks for that), they'll see that the Wikipedia article politely calls this "conjecture" and says that it needs follow up research. I'd say there's a heavy emphasis on the word might here.
Re:Dead sheeps (Score:5, Funny)
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Most efficient food is vegetable mass. Second most efficient is things that live on vegetable mass. Last comes things that eat things that live on vegetable mass.
On top of that, even if you could solve the problem of food efficiency, it would be extremely difficult to raise them efficiently, as carnivores are usually soli
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Cows are as docile as they are today because they have been bred for about as long as any animal we today have. It's true they were taken from relatively docile herbivores but not all are that way.
Llamas for example have been known to run people down and kick them for no apparent reason - presumably just because they
That is one solution... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That is one solution... (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't seem that hard, really, but people are pretty stupid.
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it's not good enough in practice because you can't trust people not to do that.
Farmers don't just cut up some cow and feed it to another cow. They buy feed from the local distributor, and often times don't even know what's in the feed. The distributor gets it from a large manufacturer. It's pretty hard for the large manufacturers to hide it if they're putting cow into cow feed.
The current small number of mad cow incidents results from old feed fed to cows years ago (or at least it can be traced to old fe
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The fix you propose cannot be patented; too much prior art and too obvious.
. . . or can it?
WHOOOOOOSH! (Score:2)
WHOOOOOOSH!
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Still, if this part is true, I can understand why they didn't let them do it:
Bad science is bad science. Let's not have 'security theator' become 'safe
Re:That is one solution... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:That is one solution... (Score:5, Interesting)
Given the fact that Finns pay (on average) 22% more for food than the EU average ( http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Food+still+expen
I would say Finns requiring test for Mad Cow to be more about protectionism (it is against trade rules to outright ban foriegn beef, but if you require very specific and expensive testing on beef that isn't harmonized with other countries, and then subsidize the testing for domestic producers, you can essentially sidestep trade rules).
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Yep, that would be pretty logical, considering that cows are vegetarians and should never be eating other animals, anyway. You could come up with some interesting sayings:
"People don't let cows eat people"
"Cows don't let cows eat cows"
"People don't let cows eat cows"
"Cows don't let people let cows eat people or cows"
It is kinda humorous- cows eating people! My solution is that I just don't eat cows or pigs
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-Eric
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- pharma company engineer a fucking cow
or- pharma company engineer fucking a cow?
Indeed!http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=d (Score:3, Informative)
I'm so embarrassed.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=define%3
Re:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& (Score:4, Funny)
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*sigh*
Its posts like these that make me consider moving to digg.
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Honda or Ford? (Score:2, Funny)
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Had to look it up (Score:3, Informative)
"Mad cow disease" is a prion disease.
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Abnormal prions cause BSE (Score:5, Funny)
The actual article headline "Mad Cow Breakthrough?" really should have been followed by a story about mad cow scientists were developing a doomsday weapon to destroy humanity, or that mad cow armies were breaking through our outer defense perimeter or some such. Would have been much more interesting.
New cows? (Score:2, Funny)
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What about the positive effects of the prions? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Assuming it's the memory of the animal itself, why would food producers care? These animals don't need to remember much more than how to mill around in a field for a while eating before being lead off to slaughter.
Mad? (Score:2)
New study! (Score:3, Interesting)
From TFA: "Prions are proteins that are naturally produced in animals."
Hmm... Removing natural things... Nope, doesn't sound like a good idea to me. I just can't wait until they find out that Prions actually helped prevent cancer or something and everyone on the planet now has a timebomb in their body.
Seriously, they'd better do some SERIOUS studies on this before feeding this crap to me.
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Tumors are the body destroying itself. It may be 'natural', but it's not helpful at all to the organism.
Prions... Well, we dunno wtf they are, except that they are a protein. Proteins were good things, last I checked, and your body needs many, many different ones to function. Until they know what it does and doesn't do, they'd be fools to release prion-free beef onto the market.
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Prions... Well, we dunno wtf they are, except that they are a protein.
So you don't know what they are, but you're suddenly making predictions about how we shouldn't "mess with them" because they might be important?
Prions are miss-folded proteins. Your body doesn't need miss-folded proteins. In fact your body doesn't need proteins directly at all, it needs certain amino acids that it can't make on it's own. Proteins are constructed from amino acids.
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I simply stated that they'd be fools to mess with things they don't know anything about yet.
See, the thing is we actually DO know a lot about nutrition and proteins. At the very least we know that prions provides us nothing we need in our diet. It sounds like you're the one that knows nothing about it. In the future I'd suggest not talking about things you know nothing about.
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Hmm... Removing natural things... Nope, doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
If you believe natural==good, I'd suggest a nice big bowl of anthrax this morning. It's 100% natural, so it must be in some way good for you, right? You could also eat some nice castor beans, which contain one of the most toxic poisons known as ricin. The feces in cows is also 100% natural, so you'll probbably get some disease from not eating that, right?
If you think that "messing with nature" is a bad thing, you should probbabl
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-Eric
*Puts on tin-foil hat* (Score:2)
Mmmm, Mmmmm. The General's Fried Chicken! (Score:2)
No, I guess that was mind control. Black power, Brother!
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Tube Steak Precursor (Score:2, Informative)
If they can suce
No. (Score:2, Insightful)
Two reactions - 1 cynical, 1 wistful (Score:3, Insightful)
My other disappointment is that so much time & resourcefulness was spent on this rather than a way to prevent prion diease from taking it's toll on the untold people who have eaten infected 'industrial-beef' through fast food & other sources but won't show symptoms for many years.
"no apparent developmental abnormalities" (Score:3, Interesting)
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A scientist doesn't have a strong interest in not finding things, finding things is what makes a scientist's career successful.
Business sponsored research isn't science. Business sponsored research usual
More MPG? (Score:2, Funny)
to ensure a creature has no prions... (Score:2)
Now, if the article title/blurb said "no mad-cow prions", I wouldn't be so picky, but this said no prions, without qualifier.
"Aye, the cow aint got no prions! 'course 'ees dead, but thar be no prions in that thar cow!"
(yes, I read TFA, I know they meant mad-cow prions, not prions in general).
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That's the key factor here. With out current knowledge/tech, prions are still a challange to verify. Additionally, we are not sure which proteins would have stable conformations that would make them prions. Therefore, with our tech as it is now, we would have to eliminate all proteins.
This wouldn't prevent BSE (Score:3, Informative)
Creating Prion-Free Cows... (Score:2, Funny)
Not infectable or not affected by infection? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, so BSE damages prions which leads to all the characteristics of the disease. No prions, no disease. But does that necessarily mean no infection?
BSE can be passed to humans. Is it possible that these genetically modified cows are just modern day Typhoid Marys?
--JoeRe: (Score:3, Funny)
I'd rather eat meat and die young. Pigs taste good.
As for environmental factors, the planet will do just fine all by itself. Until the sun explodes and destroys it, so I guess we'd better build some big engines.
That's great, but... (Score:2)
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Still, as you say, there's other good reasons t
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I'm not trying to be unhelpfull, but nearly every vegetarian I've known looks like death warmed over.
Sort-of a wash... (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, but smug self-satisfaction knocks about 10% off the lifespan, provided you're not punched by an offended meat-eater beforehand. So it's basically a wash.
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A challenge to you (Score:2)
She has asked this question of vegans and vegetarians in the past. The u
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I don't think your fiancee could ever go completely vegetarian or vegan, as you've probably figured, but she can reduce her meat intake. Whole grains and vegetables such as spinach have protein, and you don't need to have a lot of protein every day. She can also g
Eggs (Score:2)
I mean, if you're morally opposed to eating chickens, why wouldn't you be opposed to eating their abortions?
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The eggs we eat are not abortions. They are unfertilized eggs. If you ever accidently get a fertilized egg, you'll know the difference because when you crack the fertilized egg open it will be all bloody because it has an actual embryo in it. So, we are not eating baby chickens when we have scrambled eggs. Also, I don't ha
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I guess she could try Seitan, if she's not allergic to wheat as well.
Re:A better idea (Score:5, Funny)
-Eric
bovine byproducts in skin cream, jello, jackets (Score:2)
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Also, if meatless diets are so obviously better for your health, why do so few health experts choose meatless diets for themselves? Perhaps the evidence is not as clear as you think it is.
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I'm thinking of marketing a Prime diet, where you only have to pay attention to what you eat on prime-numbered days of the month. I'll call you from my yacht filled with bikini
Oh, I don't know about that... (Score:2)
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I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but vegans tend to have a particularly unhealthy pallor, a kind of pale shiny skin thing going on.
They probbably aren't getting all the amino acids their body requires. If you don't eat meat it's a bit more difficult to make sure you're getting all the essential amino acids your body can't manufacture on it's own. Most vegetarians or vegans are ignorant when it comes to understanding nutrition, they just up and decide that they're not going to eat meat but don't ch
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Flaxseed has several times the amino acids of any animal product. Soy foods are also usually fortified with any nuitrients a vegan can't get from fresh vegetables. It's not all that difficult to find what you need without eating meat.
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Oh, I wouldn't be so sure. While I agree that our western diet (I'm in the UK, so not so very far west compared to probably most of the
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I wish vegetarianism made me skinny. I've been a vegetarian since I was 13, and I've had to fight with my weight ever since I graduated high school (same with every woman in my family, damn genetics). Everyone always thinks of vegetarians/vegans as being really skinny, but I've meet a lot of vegetarians and vegans and we'r
Ever thought of changing diet? (Score:2)
Alternatively, you may be like me. I've spent the last few weeks working away at the a project, nil exercise. The result is that I'll have to work quite hard as soon as this is over, before there's no difference in width between my shoulders and my gut
Happy New
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Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Please, tell me of other ways we can lose weight with computer parts. I have a lot of Socket 370 at the moment.
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Zinc is only really abundant in certain nuts - hazelnuts and brazil nuts in particular.
So if you're a vegan, eat them nuts.
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>
> Perhaps it is you who are "ignorant" of the fact that the human body is built around an omnivorous diet.
*Sigh* Where to begin?
Humans are omnivorous largely by choice (just because we like the taste of meat) or necessity (because there aren't always enough veggies around to keep us from starving). Nature, however, gives us clues as to w
Let the patent outburst begin! (Score:2, Insightful)
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