As we’ve been telling you for the past two years, the mad-cow-disease “epidemic” promised by anti-meat and organic-agriculture scaremongers was based on activist hype, not sound science. But you don’t have to take our word for it.
Britain’s National CJD Surveillance Unit, the official government body tasked with tracking Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) and other maladies in the family of “mad cow”-like diseases, now says that fewer and fewer people are dying from these brain-wasting illnesses each year.
In fact, the mad-cow “variant” of human CJD has only claimed 132 lives (all but 10 in the UK) since it emerged in 1995, a far cry from the earlier dire predictions of 100,000 or more. That’s an average of fewer than 20 deaths per year worldwide.
To put this in its proper perspective, below are a few examples (courtesy of the National Safety Council) of “causes of death” that are responsible for more deaths in the U.S. alone than mad-cow disease causes globally every year, followed by the number of U.S. lives that each claimed in 1999.
Bitten by a dog (25)
Stung by a hornet, wasp, or bee (43)
Scalded to death by hot tap water (51)
Struck by lightning (64)
Occupant of commercial bus or train (116)
Drowned in a bathtub (320)
Accidentally suffocated or strangled in bed (330)
Fell off of a ladder (375)
Fell down stairs or steps (1,421)
