Now here’s a topic that’s guaranteed to make folks squirm. A group of Brit scientists think they’ve discovered the root cause of their country’s recent bout with Mad Cow disease. Cynics, upon hearing the proposed theory, might argue that this whole thing amounts to a massive deflection of blame to the brown nether world –
LONDON – Mad cow disease may have originated from animal feed contaminated with human remains washed ashore after being floated downriver in Indian funerals, British scientists said on Friday.…Professor Alan Colchester of the University of Kent in England says it may have been caused by the tons of animal bones and other tissue imported from India for animal feed which also may have contained the remains of humans infected with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).
…In a report in the Lancet medical journal, Colchester and his daughter Nancy, of the University of Edinburgh, explained that many human and animal corpses were disposed of in rivers in India in accordance with Hindu custom.
The remains washed ashore in poor areas where bone collectors work.
“We are aware of a considerable risk of the incorporation of human remains with the animal remains that are collected. They are processed locally and some have been exported. In 10 years, more than a third of a million tons of material from these areas was imported into the UK,” Colchester said.
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p>Needless to say, other scientists advise that these are waters upon which one should tread lightly –
“Scientists must proceed cautiously when hypothesizing about a disease that has such wide geographic, cultural and religious implications,” Shankar said.
Your old, crazy aunty from back in da homeland may have found yet another way to haunt her Western son from beyond the grave. 
Yeah, like India would EVER accept these finidings even if they were true 🙂
Vinod, no disrespect intended, but I was surprised that you didn’t post this under “Humor”.
… I will differ further cynicism until Razib has had a go at this.
Under hindu custom human corpses are cremated and the ashes are deposited into the rivers.
Cow corpses are generally skinned and used in leather production. Don’t know what happens to the bones and such, prolly glue or something.
… I will differ further cynicism until Razib has had a go at this.
i don’t know jack about prions and all sorts of weird stuff like that. but the little nasties are often more resilient than full-fledged life forms when they are dormant, so if some stuff remained intact and wasn’t burned…but i’m skeptical, cuz as i said, i don’t know jack about this stuff 🙂
Vinod beat me in posting this by mere minutes, and I hadn’t labeled it “humor” either. I don’t think this is entirely unreasonable though. I won’t have access to the full Lancet article until tomorrow but I’ll try and get more details.
Go to Google images and type in “ganges bodies” and see what comes up. Often times the bodies aren’t fully cremated. My Mom and my brother reported seeing many dead bodies floating in the river when they went.
READ THIS: This theory has a lot of holes, just don’t buy it like a ….. Nature’s magazine’s take on their theory. Alan and Nancy Colchester are some snobs – they claim Bangladesh is the culprit (do they know the difference in cremation practices). Possibly, India but even there corpses are never disposed . Hold on, read the Nature article.
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050829/full/050829-17.html
Excerts from Nature Magazine:
” Experts agree that the theory needs to be checked. More information needs to be collected, they say, about the number of deaths from CJD in the Indian subcontinent, what happened to the bodies, and whether prions could have been transmitted in the way proposed. When human sporadic CJD prions were injected into mice in previous studies, the mice did not become ill.”
I just looked it up and you are right.
Thats just plain nasty even sans the mad cow, and then people ‘cleanse’ themselves in the same water. Now I am glad I never visited the ganges.
How I got a degree from Cornell but lost all my common sense along the way?
Ganges is a much polluted river. No doubt. It is true that some (perhaps quite a few) of the partially cremated bodies and animals are floating in the Ganges. However, they get dumped at the bottom of the river not far from the source of origin. By simple laws of physics (gravity), a “heavy” human remain cannot be carried to long distances once the river has lost of its carrying power in absence of a gradient. Ganges in the pains of India (like all the rivers in the world) loses all its carry power when it meanders long distances. What Ganges can dump in Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh is only silt, and nothing else. I wish Colchesters had basic knowledge of rivers, geology, and physics. Read the Nature article to evaluate their biological aspects of their theory.
Note: If you (even non-scientists) ever want to evaluate a scientific theory, read what Nature and Science magazine have to say. Some of their articles are written in popular science fashion to be easily understood by non-professionals too. They are as careful as it gets because of their pre-eminent position as a scientific journal; the carefulness comes through seeking opinions from varied people, the peer-review process. They do make mistakes too but they are not flippant.
Ganges is definitely very polluted but do not twist the laws of physicsÂ…Â….bodies being carried long distances in rives in flat plains of India as Colchestors claim. Definitely, Bangladesh is not the source of human remains.
well, can anyone post the lancet paper somewhere??? my off campus academic access doesn’t get it for some dumbass reason.
Even my on-campus academic access can’t access it yet. Probably by tomorrow.