Fertility injection spread BSE

09 August 1999

‘Fertility injection spread BSE’

HORMONE injections given to cattle may have spread the BSE epidemic, according to a medical scientist.

The hormones, taken from the pituitary glands of slaughtered cows, were administered to improve breeding

Anne Maddocks outlines the theory in written evidence to the BSE inquiry. She argues that a cow whose pituitary gland was used for hormone treatment may have had a sporadic version of the brain disease that became known as BSE.

The infection was therefore spread among other cattle in other parts of the country before “cannibalism” through feed became a factor.

The Scotsman reports that hundreds of children were exposed to the risk of catching Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of BSE, by vaccines derived from the brain and spinal chord of cows.

• The Guardian 09/08/99 page 8
  
• The Scotsman 09/08/99 page 1