Jakob-Creutzfeldt-Disease Books

Parden the pun but where's the beef?
If Dr. Gajdusek was accused of child abuse, how does that relate to Mad Cow?
If Kuru affected some brain eaters before Mad Cow entered the world's vocabluary does that require a whole chapter?
If sheep drop dead from a relative of BSE who cares?
The authors buried the dangers of beef so deep in unrelated and unimportant information, an earth mover couldn't get to the point.
Most meat eaters will write this book off as pure science totally unrelated to everyday life.
Ironicly, those same meat eaters have the most to loose from a carnivore diet. While BSE is rare, there are a million other reasons to avoid meat not the least of which is the filthy slaughter houses.

Eeeek! After reading this I am never, ever eating non-organic meat again. And if I win the lottery I think I'll raise my own critters for eggs & milk (or better yet pay someone else to do it!). This book is frightening but helps explain why many of us feel so damned cruddy most of the time. There are so many toxins and chemicals and other assorted grossities in our food supply it's a wonder many of us are still breathing.

Parts of the book are a bit meandering and repetitive but I am very glad I took the time to get through it.

Wow! Judging from the prices of these used copies, the scalpers are out in force now that we have MCD in USA. You can get this book FREE as a download at www.prwatch.org/books/mcusa.pdf .

It is a great book, with a great history of the disease, its epidemiology, and uncovers the truth about the beef industry and their ties to the Dept of Agriculture. Get it!

Six years before the appearance of mad cow disease in the US, this book predicted it. Mad Cow USA warned that the meat industry and the government were failing to take the necessary steps to prevent the disease here, and using falsehoods and PR to cover-up their failings. Unfortunately, this book nailed it.

This is an excellent activist book on the discovery of a new type of disease, BSE, also called Mad Cow Disease. The story involves a very interesting history of the science as well as the reactions of the beef and fast food industries.

In a nutshell, the disease appears to be caused by an improperly folded protein (a "prion"), which when it enters the bloodstream can multiply and eventually turn the host's brain into mush, with horrible consequences of course. What the authors highlight is that the mode of transmission appears to be ingestion of these bent proteins, principally from infected cows, years if not decades before symptoms appear. They also stress that the manner in which cows are raised in industrial agriculture makes transmission far more likely: they are directly fed ruminants (leftover cow remains that cannot be eaten by humans), thereby transferring the prions on a massive scale. Humans can then eat them and perhaps become infected by BSE.

After this fascinating and beautifully writtern history, the authors then explore what should be done. While some ruminant feeding has ceased, they argue, the actions of beef producers are both too little (because they are voluntary) and inadequate (because they allow certain forms of ruminant, such as blood, to be fed to cows today). This part of the book is pure advocacy and, I believe, effective in arguing that all ruminant feeding must cease. While I cannot weigh in on the science, it really got me to think in a more informed way.

Recommended. This could become a far greater debate if, it turns out, a lot more infected beef-eating Americans are found. The authors stimulate debate.

This novel takes the reader on a ride through faith and doubt, chemical excesses and painful sobriety, group [physical activity] and isolation--in short, it is a feast or famine, depending on how you look at it. I was shocked at the realistic [physical activity] scenes. As a veteran rock n' roller, myself, I wonder if Sigurdson, the author, has really lived the wild life portrayed here.

Cowslip goes beyond the veneer of the imagination into something more real, and ultimately, terrifying. Make no mistake about it: this is a work of horror in the strongest sense of the word, but it is also literature, not mere genre.

All passages dealing with the supernatural are reigned in. The control is admirable and something that Stephen King and HP Lovecraft could have learned from. I would say this novel can hold its own with Henry James' Turn of the Screw any day. And like James' masterpiece, the reader never really knows if the angels and demons are real or not, but there are some tantilizing clues that they are.

While Sigurdson occationally indulges in the quim of adolescence, and the book teeters on the edge of minutae, it is never boring. Indeed, these details combine to make it uncomfortably real. Once you start reading, you can't put it down, even though the end product leaves a strange taste in your brain. You'll be chewing your mental "cud" for days after this one. Good luck.

This novel takes the reader on a ride through faith and doubt, chemical excesses and painful sobriety, group sex and isolation--in short, it is a feast or famine, depending on how you look at it. I was shocked at the realistic sex scenes. As a veteran rock n' roller, myself, I wonder if Sigurdson, the author, has really lived the wild life portrayed here.

Cowslip goes beyond the veneer of the imagination into something more real, and ultimately, terrifying. Make no mistake about it: this is a work of horror in the strongest sense of the word, but it is also literature, not mere genre.

All passages dealing with the supernatural are reigned in. The control is admirable and something that Stephen King and HP Lovecraft could have learned from. I would say this novel can hold its own with Henry James' Turn of the Screw any day. And like James' masterpiece, the reader never really knows if the angels and demons are real or not, but there are some tantilizing clues that they are.

While Sigurdson occationally indulges in the quim of adolescence, and the book teeters on the edge of minutae, it is never boring. Indeed, these details combine to make it uncomfortably real. Once you start reading, you can't put it down, even though the end product leaves a strange taste in your brain. You'll be chewing your mental "cud" for days after this one. Good luck.

One way or another, Cowslip, by Kirk Sigurdson, will affect you. You might feel unsettled, you might feel uplifted, you might become a vegetarian - all are possible responses to this powerful literary cocktail.

The setting is Portland, Oregon, where we peek behind the scenes of the music industry as Julia Fleischer makes a name for herself. She's hot, dynamic, and has a voice that starts a bidding war among record labels.

She also has only a few months to live.

Julia is a victim of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a fatal brain disorder related to mad cow disease. It's a short stay on death row, and causes rapid, progressive dementia and neuromuscular disturbances.

In Julia's case, it causes terrifying hallucinations of demons and shadow people who observe her every move. We watch as her brain decays, as the hallucinations become more real. But are they really hallucinations? In Julia's reality, she is communicating with supernatural beings - demons and later, angels, from the great beyond.

What makes Julia's version of reality so compelling is the way the story is told. Almost the entire book takes the form of journal entries, so the reader gets the impression that Julia is speaking directly to them. It's conversational, natural, and highly personal.

Sigurdson has no problem writing in the voice of a 22-year-old female music star. She sounds exactly as she should, telling all the gritty details of wild LA parties, hard drugs, sex, whacked-out musicians, and a secret sexual longing for her best friend Ruth.

All the while, the CJD is perforating her brainmeats. But Julia is determined to live intensely and fully, despite her collapses and increasingly frequent encounters with the darkness and light beyond the grave.

Aside from the compelling format, plenty of clues point the reader towards believing Julia's version of reality. She records encounters with apparitions of people she knows, for example, then finds out that they have just died. More subtle clues are embedded in the shadow creatures' language. I did a quick Internet search for one of the words, and came up with one hit: Charms and conjurations of Hungarian Gypsy magic. The word meant "shadow." (If these were simply hallucinations, she would only hear words she understands, or nonsense.)

Sigurdson does an expert job of suspending our disbelief and seriously creeping us out. Ultimately, it's a love story, but with a backdrop of hard-driving, cranked-up-to-11 music; afloat in gin and champagne; tripping on smack; ... and always, always the shadow creatures just under the surface. ...

by Paige Terneur

Many of the references were incorrect. Especially, the chapters on the scientific perspectives of BSE.

While this book is not for everyone, I would recommend it for researchers who want more objective information on the British BSE situation. It was written before a confirmed case of the disease was found in the U.S., but still provides valuable background on the European development of the issue. The two chapters providing a content analysis of both the British and American media's framing of the disease were particularly helpful.

If you want to buy a book about mad cow diseases, check out Deadly Feasts or Mad Cow USA. This book edited by Ratzan is a disappointing hodge podge, disjointed and not interesting.

I was ver disappointed with this, I was more expecting something that told more about all the how's, why's and where's...... This was more along the lines of statistics, surprising as they were... I'ts just I wanted more on where they have linked this to come from, our water? the use of antibiotics? pesticides????? All very big but yet simple questions I do still have. I have also wondered more about statistics as far as projected outlook, where do they think this disease will be in say 50 years?