Organic dairy farmer Mark Purdey became infamous in 1984 when he took on and beat off Department of Agriculture regulations to dowse all his cattle with organophosphate pesticides (OPs), whether or not the herd showed any sign of warble fly infection. He developed a hypothesis that exposure to OPs could leach copper from brain cells, leading to increased levels of manganese in those cells, which bound to prion proteins in the brain, changing their form and leading to BSE.

Mark now believes that exposure to external electromagnetic fields (such as those from mobile phones), radar and infrasound, increases the speed of storage in manganese-rich cells (explaining that manganese-rich, copper-poor cells absorb and store electricity rather than conduct it, as cells adequate in copper do). Having a limited storage capacity, the cells ‘explode’ when their store of electricity reaches a certain point, creating the brain lesions seen in BSE and nvCJD.

Mark has also noted that nvCJD clusters are most often around airports, where aeroplanes bathe the surrounding areas with high levels of infrasound, or under Concorde’s flight path. Concorde emits particularly high levels of infrasound shock waves, impacting 50 kilometres either side. In the US, likewise, the highest levels of nvCJD are found on Staten Island and Long Island, both under the take off flight paths from J. F. Kennedy Airport.

Sources of manganese include: fertilisers and fungicides; animal feeds; paints and petrol additives; soya products; and infant milk formula. Disturbingly, manganese is added to human and animal infant milk formula at levels up to 1000 times higher than occurs in breast/udder milk. Infants’ blood-brain barriers are not completely formed, making their brains more vulnerable to damage from toxic metals in the body. Mark notes that BSE was far more prevalent in dairy herds (where calves are nearly always fed on formula) than in beef herds (where calves are nearly always suckled on cows’ milk).

Ed.- The Government holds on to the hypothesis that BSE was caused by feeding mammalian meat and bone meal (MMBM) to cattle despite the fact that:

• 40,000 cases of BSE have been diagnosed in animals born after the use of MMBM was banned in 1988 (possibly, therefore, due to milk formula)

• most countries using MMBM have suffered no BSE cases

• there have been many cases of BSE in animals never fed MMBM

• goats and sheep also fed on MMBM but have never developed BSE

• no attempt to infect animals with BSE by feeding them massive doses of scrapie-infected materials has succeeded

• the cheap beef products blamed for nvCJD in humans are eaten worldwide but nvCJD clusters are principally an English and French phenomenon where the highest levels of organophosphate pesticides were used on cattle

See also Windfarm infrasound brings migraine and depression and Infrasound, deep vein thrombosis and BSE