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Creating Prion-Free Cows

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the un-mad-cows dept.

Science Daily is reporting that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is reporting positive results from a recent study designed to create genetically engineered prion-free cattle. From the article: "ARS studied eight Holstein males that were developed by Hematech Inc., a pharmaceutical research company based in Sioux Falls, S.D. The evaluation of the prion-free cattle was led by veterinary medical officer Juergen Richt of ARS' National Animal Disease Center (NADC) in Ames, Iowa. The evaluation revealed no apparent developmental abnormalities in the prion-free cattle."

7 of 340 comments (clear)

  1. Dead sheeps by Per+Abrahamsen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is great! Now we can go back to feeding the cows a healthy diet of dead sheep, which was how the whole "mad cow" thing started.

    1. Re:Dead sheeps by WindBourne · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, that is not proven. It it THOGUGHT that scrapies is the same as Madcow ( and MC CWD CJD), but they are not certain. But even with that, I want to know how accurate is the test these days? It is great that they did not have any positive in what was suppose to be negative cattle. But will they get a good positive in an infected animal?

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    2. Re:Dead sheeps by slashbob22 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But will they get a good positive in an infected animal? As far as I understand with MC, CWD, Scrapies, CJD and Varient CJD the only way to ensure accuracy of tests is through a biopsy of the brain tissue of a dead subject. While there are tests for live subjects (clinical observations) they are not definitive.
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      Proof by very large bribes. QED.
  2. That is one solution... by abscissa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... or you could just not feed them parts of their dead relatives?

    1. Re:That is one solution... by Oswald · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Isn't it encouraging to know that, while your solution works in theory, it's not good enough in practice because you can't trust people not to do that.

      Doesn't seem that hard, really, but people are pretty stupid.

  3. Two reactions - 1 cynical, 1 wistful by punterjoe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I too wondered why "big science" would try to come up with a way to create cattle that can still be fed 'cannibal chow' without getting sick, instead of just changing the feed to something healthy, when I realised there are no IP licensing rights for natural, healthy cattle. This 'super cow' is surely patentable :(
        My other disappointment is that so much time & resourcefulness was spent on this rather than a way to prevent prion diease from taking it's toll on the untold people who have eaten infected 'industrial-beef' through fast food & other sources but won't show symptoms for many years.

  4. Re:Not quite the same disease by Syrrh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Presumably the testing isn't over, the researchers just decided that 2 years is a pretty good success indicator, especially when they've been injecting BSE prions *directly into the brains* of the test animals. If the infection can't take hold in that condition, I'd say it pretty well surpasses any naturally occuring scenarios. Still too early to say with absolute certainty, but they have good reason to celebrate so far.

    I'm more interested in where this heads beyond the BSE scare, since it'll be a lot harder to genetically scrub out CJD and CWD, but at least the possibility is opening up. I'm really interested to see if this manipulation ends up with no side-effects since it means that genetic cruft is seriously dangerous. With the genome mapped, will there be mumbles about getting the non-functional buffer sections tailored and zeroed out to ward off other mysterious and rare afflictions?