Animal Pharm: One Man s Struggle to Discover the Truth about Mad Cow Disease and Variant CJD

I rarely have time to read a book lately, but this one was a definite exception. In fact, I could not put it down once I started. I was enthralled by the drama of the story as much as by the sleuthing involved in figuring out something as mysterious as prion diseases. Mark Purdey, an organic farmer, travelled the world in order to find answers to the mysterious madcow disease that was plaguing the cows in Great Britain. His tragic early death inspired his brother to complete the book, by writing the first and last chapters. Both brothers write eloquently and clearly, and the case they make for prion disease being due to a deficiency in copper alongside an excess of manganese exposure is so compelling that I don't see why this theory has not yet gone "main stream." It explains prion pathology much better than anything else I've heard, and provides a very simple explanation for the apparent "contagiousness" of the disease, induced by administering misfolded prions as an infecting agent. It's a wonderful book worth a prominent place on your bookshelf!!

If you read any book to find out more about Mad Cow disease, read this one. This guy offers a very in-depth, scientific, and fitting theory to explain Mad Cow and related neuro-degenerative diseases. He fuses several different scientific and academic disciplines in his attempt to take the mystery out of Mad Cow disease with first-hand, peer-reviewed research, and submits that it is rather a combination of several different factors that cause Mad Cow and variant-CJD; primarily a lack of trace elements in the body that are essential to the brain's blood-barrier defense, then followed by, simply put, heavy metal poisoning of the brain.He studied clustered cases of CJD and Mad Cow around the world and discovered that at every location in which more than one case appeared in a locality, there was also a source of metal contaminant pollution nearby - often, he noted, upwind of the outbreak location - such as military munitions factories and disposal sites, and manganese mine and quarry outfits.This book made a lot of sense to me with its truckload of scientific facts and figures, and has inspired me to take an interest (and maybe someday pursue further education) in possible chemical explanations of similar brain diseases.

This book should be required reading for every meat eater on the planet. Purdey died much too young just a few years ago, and one must wonder (after the other mysterious deaths that occurred as he was investigating the link between mad cow and pesticides) just how much good he could have done if he had lived. Purdey's research is no doubt extremely unpopular with the mega-corporations that make the pesticides and the governments that rubber stamp them. All the more reason to arm yourself with this knowledge. HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

This book sets out a logical explaination for TSEs. Much of the present policies and popular expalation for scrapie in sheep has been extapulated from research on lab animals. How scrapie behaves under natural circumstances is not the same as in lab animals. Yet the present polcy is driven by the lab results. The tracking of cases of Mad Cow certainly supports the enviromental influences.

I do not feel myself competent to write a proper review (as it happens, I was invited to write a review of this book by a magazine, but declined for above reason), but I cannot praise it highly enough.Mark Purdey died, aged 52, of a brain tumour, and his brother and collaborator finished the book off from Mark's papers.It tells a remarkable story of how Mark, believing the UK Government's line about BSE and 'Meat and Bone Meal' was codswallop, taught himself the necessary scientific disciplines and set out to find the real cause of BSE.Having learnt the science, he then went around the world, checking out BSE, CJD, vCJD and other Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSE) 'clusters', in regards to soil composition, metals, proximity to pollution sources etc.His labours resulted not only in notable breakthroughs, but in the wrath of the government agencies and Big Business, and an extremely serious 'dirty tricks' programme against himself and his collaborators.Before his tragic early death, he was working on Bovine TB, and had a notable success in a small-scale experiment, but died before he could work on it further.The last words in his part of the book were 'Whilst the positive results of this pilot study are not significant in scientific terms, because of the small number of animals involved, they indicate the likelihood that these 'inconclusive' cattle are no longer reacting to the TB test because they had been treated with a feed which chelates and competes for the iron. It is imperative that this investigation is advanced to the next stage and tested on a much larger group of animals'.

Very good delivery and book

Mark was a truly amazing man, and very sadly missed.Mark's book, published posthumously by his brother Nigel details his relentless search for answers and the truth; about BSE, vCJD, TB and much, much more.His research took him all over the world- at his own expense.A fascinating read. As a person with Multiple Sclerosis, I can identify with a lot of what he talks about.With vCJD hitting the News again, this book should be read widely {I had ordered a second copy to lend out.}