Waiheke Island BSE Attack/Hoax???

[Phurrball]

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy

I knew it was only a matter of time before someone 'broke' and revealed the full form of that acronym! Hurrah!

There's been some bollocks that I heard Sean Plunket pull someone up on on Tuesday morning.

Indeed, the media make me cringe sometimes WRT reporting anything with scientific content - to get an idea read this (scroll down a bit fir FMD stuff - Cheers Russel Brown!): http://publicaddress.net/default,2124.sm

Media *love* look for something alarming, bugger the scientific accuracy!

Right now I've got a bad feeling that Phurrball taught it to me.

*cough*

that and I work in a medical lab

Unlikely I had anything to do with it -
(Insert aged voice here, while leaning on walking stick)
Back in my day, Apthovirus possibly mentioned in 300/400 level micro, little/nothing on prions until at a postgrad level (Remember someone presenting a prion paper in lab meeting once...)

I blame the MELSness for thehollowmen's knowledge of such matters!

Nothing quite like a knowledge vomit... Hehe!

[Skyryder]

Seem to remember some farmers down south taking the law into their own hands. Took it upon themselves and released the Calicivirus regardlessof the consquences. If this ever mutates watch out homo sapien. These guys got a lot of support from the farming community in general. To make matters worse no one was ever charged. I'm not condoing bio blackmail by any means but after that illegal release the farming commuinty lost my sympathy forever.

Skyryder

[Hitcher]

You've got to (sometimes) love Russell Brown. We copped a bit of a backlash from some farmers and other industry stakeholders when they thought they should have heard about this latest gig before we released it to the media. We had no choice, or the financial markets would have got wind of "rumours" in the absence of official comment and goodness knows what effect that may have had on financial markets. If the exchange rate since midday Tuesday is an indicator of the effectiveness of our messages and messaging, then so far, so good!

Another concern is that television love using file footage of burning pyres of dead cows and sheep without relevant captions to prevent confusion: UK, 2001; not New Zealand 2005.

[Phurrball]

Seem to remember some farmers down south taking the law into their own hands. Took it upon themselves and released the Calicivirus regardlessof the consquences. If this ever mutates watch out homo sapien. These guys got a lot of support from the farming community in general. To make matters worse no one was ever charged. I'm not condoing bio blackmail by any means but after that illegal release the farming commuinty lost my sympathy forever.

Skyryder

Indeed, the 'rabbit liver smoothies' did make me wonder how the farmers would have reacted if the boot was on the other foot...anyway, an uncontrolled release ends up being patchy compared to a managed deployment. At least it does provide employment for scientists, and the odd PhD project (I know of one...)

[Bitter irony being that science funding in NZ often requires some sort of 'bad' thing to happen...ambulance at the bottom of the cliff stuff. Sadly, the mainstream media aren't very interested in real threats, for example, Arboviruses following in the wingbeats of their biting-insect vectors, as the vectors' ranges increase in NZ due to climate change... ]

I doubt that RHDV will infect humans - most viruses are pretty species specific...