Desenzano Conference Downplays Mad Cow Disease Risks and Media Alarm

Good news from Desenzano regarding the “mad cow” incident. The speakers at the conference held yesterday afternoon at Palazzo Todeschini, organized by the municipal Department of Culture in collaboration with the “Cultura e Azione” association, described the issue as an “absurdity,” a “problem exaggerated by the media,” and “not at all a danger to human health.”

As Dr. Vincenzo Scontrino, a medical director at the Desenzano Emergency Room and author of several publications, stated in his speech, “the lack of scientific knowledge has turned this disease, which was a relatively minor problem, into a transnational emergency that has involved health emergency services.”

Among the attendees in the Desenzano conference hall were some farmers and butchers, as well as healthcare professionals and ordinary citizens drawn to or perhaps curious about the topic that has dominated discussions for over a month now.

Hazard of smoking compared to mad cow disease

“We always hear little about smoking and its devastating effects,” Scontrino noted, “yet we have certainty that it causes lung cancer; while for mad cow disease, we only know that it may cause problems. In short, we need to understand that cigarette smoke is immeasurably more dangerous than a steak.”

“In England,” he recalled, “there have been 80,000 cattle and 80 people affected by the disease. Fortunately, Italy has reported no cases: I wonder why all this alarm was created.”

Furthermore, the speaker explained that “genetics are not a problem for humanity; on the contrary, they are the solution to a series of problems.”

Report on the nervous system and encephalopathies

Also notable was the presentation by Dr. Gianluigi Zanusso, a researcher at the Institute of Neurology at the University of Verona, who recalled that encephalopathies—diseases affecting the nervous system—are characterized solely by neurological symptoms, cognitive disturbances, and loss of balance.

Zanusso then explained the pathogenic agent that triggers BSE and its attack on nerve cells.

Currently, according to the researcher, “the study of all deceased individuals suspected of having Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease allows us to exclude the presence of variant cases of the disease. In Italy, mostly sporadic cases are observed.”

The conference was also attended by Mayor Anelli and assessors Giustacchini and Farinelli.