by Barbara Ferguson Kennedy
In the following interview for Health Science, Howard Lyman, who first came to prominence in the Mad Cow Disease controversy in the 1990s, restates his views on the growing threat of that malady.
Howard Lyman is an advocate and expert on Mad Cow Disease. He has spoken to millions of people on radio stations and television in over 200 countries to voice his concern about ‘factory farms’ practice of making herbivore animals cannibals. Lyman speaks from experience: he is a fourth-generation cattle rancher from Montana. (His book, Mad Cowboy, is available from NHA — $21.00 NHA members, $23.00 non-members).
With Foot-and-Mouth Disease making headlines as it leaps from country to country, Lyman believes that Mad Cow Disease, which is communicable and lethal to human beings, may also soon reach epidemic proportions. In the following interview, he discusses in detail the awful consequences of Mad Cow Disease, and urges consumers to become informed on what some governments are reluctant to reveal.
A small vocal minority has been warning for years that the transfer of this animal disease to humans — in the form of a new variety of Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease, CJD, (pronounced Croytsfeld Yawkob) could lead to massive human suffering and deaths. CJD in all forms is 100% fatal to humans.
“This disease, with a human incubation period of ten to forty years, makes the plague look like child’s play,” says Lyman.
Lyman says not only Foot-and-Mouth Disease but also Mad Cow Disease has escaped from England and now is causing panic throughout Europe. “As a result, the consumption of beef has fallen as much as eighty percent in some areas of France. In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder is considering banning factory farms. Why? Because there has never been a reported case of Mad Cow Disease, or Foot-and-Mouth Disease, in free-range organic beef.”
CJD was first identified in England in 1986, says Lyman. By 1990 it was classified as an epidemic and by 1996 over 1,000 cows a week were confirmed with the disease. In an attempt to control the problem, the English government has destroyed millions of cattle and incinerated them at a temperature of 1100°C. The resulting ash is still considered infectious and is stored in metal vats in WWII blimp hangars.
Lyman says Mad Cow Disease has some very disturbing properties. It can be passed from the mother to the fetus in the womb; it can be passed from a bull to a cow through the sperm. It can be passed from one species to another quite freely by transfusion of contaminated blood or consumption of infected material. Infected material about the size of a peppercorn is all that is needed to infect an animal. Tests have shown the disease to remain active when buried in soil for years. Finally, it can contaminate inanimate objects.
“The infectious agent of Mad Cow Disease is non-living; it’s called a prion, which is an abnormal protein. A normal protein is in a spiral; an abnormal protein, a prion, is laid out like a slipper. If this ‘slipper’ is put in association with a normal protein, the protein becomes abnormal.
“That’s how CJD creates holes in the brain. The brain is full of protein, and it’s when the protein acts abnormally, that people lose their memory, they stumble, they go blind, and they die.”
Since the late 1970s the number of cases of Alzheimer’s Disease has increased dramatically, and Lyman says the symptoms of Alzheimer’s and CJD are very similar. “ Several studies in the U.S. have shown between five to fifteen percent of dementia diagnoses were, in fact, CJD. It is very likely that we are significantly under-reporting the number of cases of CJD due to patients being misdiagnosed.
“The (U.S.) government would like everyone to believe that CJD is naturally occurring in one of every one million of the population. The problem is, the symptoms of CJD are almost identical to Alzheimer’s. Twelve million Americans are currently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and in every study I have seen where they actually took the brains of people who had died from dementia, and put the brain under the microscope, between 5 and 15 percent really had CJD.
The only way you can tell if it is CJD or Alzheimer’s is to take out the brain. And no pathologist wants to touch a CJD brain because he cannot clean his tools, he cannot sterilize his laboratory.
“The current crisis has shown us some very useful control methods. We must stop feeding animals to animals. We must restrict the use of animal products in our daily lifestyle.”
“In 1996 on the Oprah Winfrey Show, I voiced my concerns over our practice of feeding cows back to cows here in the U.S. Members of the cattle industry sued me along with Oprah for violating the Food Disparagement Act of Texas,” says Lyman. “We won after a six-week trial in the Federal District Court in Amarillo, Texas.”
But the cattlemen were unsatisfied with the outcome, and they appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. Lyman says Oprah Winfrey and he won a unanimous decision after waiting almost a year. “The Court’s opinion was that I had told the truth and that the truth was not actionable. The cattlemen, still dissatisfied, asked for a rehearing that was denied. Although I wish that were the end of the matter, over one hundred other cattlemen filed the same suit in State Court. I’m not a resident of Texas so I have the right to move the case from State Court to Federal Court, which I did, and the cattlemen have also appealed that action. For over four years I have had to retain lawyers to defend my right to tell the American people the truth about the way we are feeding our cattle and the potential threat that practice may pose. Today the legal morass continues.”
Does a Vegetarian Diet Make a Difference?
“Loma Linda University in California did a recent study where they found that vegetarians live 7.9 years longer than people on the Standard American Diet; studies done in England, Germany and Finland show that people on a vegan (no meat, eggs or dairy) diet will live up to 12 to 15 years longer.
“That supports the data that comes from C. Everett Koop, about people dying from diseases associated with their diet,” says Lyman.
“In addition there is the ‘China Project’ that was done by Dr. T. Colin Campbell at Cornell University which shows that heart disease, diabetes and cancer are all directly associated with the consumption of animal products and animal protein. [http://www.nutrition.cornell.edu/faculty/campbell/html]
“It is not just the fat, not just the cholesterol, but animal protein. Take arthritis and asthma — just as a starting point — they are directly associated with the body’s reaction to dairy products. The human body treats cow’s milk as an invader. The people who are fortunate are the ones who are lactose intolerant,” says Lyman.
But it is the consumers’ willingness to be herded, to “walk blindly, nose-to-tail” that outrages Lyman. “There is the tendency of people to accept ‘public relations’ as ‘facts.’ We see hundreds of millions of dollars that are being spent today to make outrageous claims, like ‘Milk does a body good,‘ ‘ Milk is nature’s most perfect food,’ or how about the one that talks about osteoporosis, loss of calcium from the bone, and says ‘Dairy products are loaded with calcium and therefore good for osteoporosis’.
“All of that is true, but the consumer believes that if they want to deal with osteoporosis, they better eat dairy products because it’s loaded with calcium. What it doesn’t say is that if you consume the dairy products you will probably end up getting osteoporosis, because it leaches the body of calcium. What happens is that when you have too much protein in the diet, the excess amino acids are sent to the kidneys and to neutralize this you either have to take the calcium from the blood or the bone. Luckily we take it from the bone, because if the blood calcium goes down, you will die.
“The thing that bothers me is that our government knows the facts of the issue, but it doesn’t want to share it with the public.” Lyman says what annoys him is that, “It’s not about telling the people the truth; it’s about telling the story that makes the greatest amount of profit for the people who are supporting the greatest number of politicians.”
American People Know About ‘Mad Cow Disease,’ and Don’t Trust the Government Regarding It.
“USA Today did a survey last week, and they found that 96% of the American public knew about Mad Cow Disease. I have never seen an issue where 96% of the American people knew about anything,” says Lyman, with a twinkle in his eye.
“If you take the fact that the people know about the issue, and the people don’t trust the government, we have a phenomenal opportunity for education.
“Changing people’s eating habits is difficult; it’s like calling your mother a bad name. Your mother loved you; she fed you a certain way, why change? The issue is that when your mother was feeding you, she was not feeding you animals that were being fed other animals,” says Lyman.
“When I was on the Oprah Winfrey Show, I said that we have a disease that makes AIDS look like the common cold. In the March 12 issue of Newsweek magazine, the front cover said: “Mad Cow Disease has the potential to make E.coli look like Chicken Pox.”
“What we have is a disease that is 100% terminal — we don’t know anybody who has survived this disease.”
Lyman says people can educate themselves by going to the websites, and can access his website, madcowboy.com, or vegsource.com. “There is so much information on the Internet regarding Mad Cow Disease right now. There are millions of pages of documents. We don’t have to sit around and wait for the press to break the issue. The press has already alerted the nation. It’s now up to us to educate ourselves.”
©Copyright 2001. All Rights Reserved. Health Science is the publication of the National Health Association. This article reprinted from the Spring 2001 issue.