Sickened Pork Workers Have New Nerve Disorder

[Purveyor]

Lachance said it is possible that bits of pig brain stimulated an immune response in the bodies of the workers, causing their immune systems to improperly attack their own nerve tissue.

"It is a very strong association -- the fact that we are talking about harvesting (pig brains) and potentially exposing workers to nervous system tissue and then they are coming down with a neurological syndrome," he said in a telephone interview.

Dr. James Sejvar of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said it is unlikely the condition could be passed from person to person.

"It doesn't appear this is in any way a foodborne illness," Sejvar told a media briefing. He said the processing technique used appears to be very uncommon.

"We canvassed 25 of the largest pork processors in the United States," Sejvar said. "We have identified only these three plants that use this process."

All three plants have suspended the processing practice as a precaution.

While symptoms range in severity, most of the cases are mild. "Most of these patients have relatively mild weakness on their examinations or in fact no weakness, but have a predominance of sensory symptoms. They could be walking around and not have the appearance of being ill," Lachance said.

He said those who were mildly affected received drugs that address numbness and pain, and those who were more severely affected were treated with drugs that suppress or modulate the immune system.

"No one has completely recovered," Lachance said, adding, "Most have improved to a very modest degree, mainly in terms of their fatigue and sensory symptoms."

---EOE---

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1636729020080416?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0

[Indiana_Dem]

1. I am aware of this because we have Tyson in our town, I'm a nurse

who works at the local hospital, and we've had some young workers come through with what was thought to be stroke symptoms. We thought maybe they were being exposed to something at the plant because it was strange that they were all workers at the plant.

[flashl]

2. Snippets from older posts ...

Mayo Clinic stumped

Mayo Clinic physicians hope to find a diagnosis for a mysterious illness discovered at an Austin meat processing plant. But their target might not exist in any medical text. They've begun to realize the condition they're treating in at least 11 employees of Quality Pork Processing Inc. could instead end up classified as a new illness. On Friday, for the first time, they gave the unexplained neurological symptoms a tentative new name: "Inflammatory peripheral neuropathy."

---

Doctors at the Mayo Clinic say they suspect direct contact with pig brains

The head of Mayo Clinic's Peripheral Nerve Section is Doctor P. James B. Dyck. He has been seeing workers from the Quality Pork Processing plant who have symptoms of a neurological illness.

Dyck says doctors aren't drawing any conclusions yet, but it's possible that contact with neural material could have led to an autoimmune response. That's when the body's immune system attacks itself.

"I think that's a very intriguing idea," he says. "That neural tissue could have perhaps set up some sort of immune response causing this type of neuritis."
...

Dyck says two more workers are about to be tested at the Mayo Clinic. About half of the 11 workers who have already been tested showed signs of the disease Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (C.I.D.P.). The disease slowly weakens muscles and causes numbness.

[kestrel91316]

3. Apparently there is an association with the equipment they are

processing the pigs with. There is a device that sort of "sand blasts" the brain tissue and spinal cord away from bone (gotta get every last molecule of it for the sake of the bottom dollar, ya know) and the debris is so fine these guys are inhaling it, ot it's getting blasted right into them.

What we DON'T need to be doing is introducing novel pig diseases into humans where (if they are caused by viruses or prions) theymight stand a chance of adapting to humans and spreading directly among us. That ought to scare the bejeebus out of anybody......

[OKthatsIT]

4. I hope they also check out the immune response to GMO feed

I heard GMO alters the genes in soil bacteria, as well as the bacteria in the human digestive tracts...and that's irreversable damage.

When you screw with the bioflora of the human digestive tract, you create allergic reactions to just about anything...allergies are the first symptoms humans acquire from GMO exposure. When the intestines are out of whack, anything and everything becomes an 'overload' to your immune system.

Allergic reaction is your immune system attacking your body.