The new work proves that the prions can bond with manganese in animal feeds or mineral licks. These manganese prions cause the neurological degeneration seen in BSE. By a similar process, prions in human brains are damaged by lice lotions containing organophosphate. This can result in neurological diseases like CJD and Alzheimers -later in life.
Many might be surprised to hear that organophosphates were developed by Nazi chemists during the course World War Two,
as a chemical weapon nerve agent. One formulation of the insecticide -- Maneb, or Mancozeb -- actually contains manganese in addition to organophosphate.
The marginalized research has devestating financial implications for ICI. It would provide a firm basis for litigants -who could include CJD sufferers, farmers across the world and families of the many British farmers who committed suicide during this BSE debacle.
Phosmet organophosphate has been used at high doses in British warble fly campaigns. In 1996, ICI subsidiary Zeneca sold the phosmet patent to a PO Box company in Arizona called Gowan -just one week before the UK government admitted to a link between BSE and nvCJD.
The politically well-connected British pharmaceuticals group, ICI has the financial and political clout to block research into any cause other than the infective model. Indeed no substantive alternative research has been done. British BSE disease management and research bodies have taken decisions that do not seem guided by spirited scientific enquiry. Mysterious prions that jump species is the preferred research arena.
Scientist and organic farmer, Mark Purdey gave evidence to the UK BSE inquiry, that warble fly insecticide was the cause of the disease. The scientist wheeled out to rubbish Purdy's evidence -Dr. David Ray, later turned out to have been receiving funding from the insecticide manufacturer ICI.
A lobby group that includes Bayer, Monsanto, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche and Schering-Plough was behind the effort to discredit Purdey. In December 1999, the same David Ray was appointed to the UK Veterinary Products Committee (VPC) -a government body that licences animal medicines.
Purdey has been consistently denied even exploratory funding to extend his privately supported research. Yet the Purdey/Brown chemical poisoning model matches with the epidermiological spread of CJD clusters in humans. It also predicts the incidence of BSE-type diseases in animals. The accepted infectious model fits neither.
The pharmaceutical industry is all the more determined to hide the chemical source of BSE and CJD, because a spotlight on chemicals would expose the role the insecticides in Alzheimer's -- another neurodegenerative disease -- that might lead to claims which would dwarf those from BSE and CJD litigants. In fact, two leading brain researchers into CJD and Alzheimers have died in suspicious circumstances in recent years.
