Chronic Waste Distortions
By Trent LoosIf you’ve been honored with a few letters behind your name, you have access to some research funds, and you can put together a professional looking document, you can get your “work” published in a well-known magazine like Nature. Then newspapers across the country will reprint various excerpts from the article and forget to mention that it was not peer-reviewed nor does it even hold any water with other scientists in the field.
This is the case of some “gray” science that recently appeared in Nature magazine by Michael W. Miller and Elizabeth S. Williams. While the authors try to scare consumers with statements like “prion diseases have emerged worldwide as a threat to human and animal health,” they fail to mention that not one person has yet been infected with chronic wasting disease. In fact, the disease appears to be only transmissible between cervids (deer and elk).
The population of cervids in the United States exceeds 30 million and Williams drew her “scientific conclusions” from a study of less than 20 deer. The authors concluded that “concentrating deer in captivity or by feeding them artificially may facilitate transmission.” There is nothing in their study that supports this conclusion or even addresses the issue in question. The validity of these conclusions has been called into question by respected scientists in the field including Dr. James C. Kroll of the Forest Resources Institute at Stephen F. Austin University. Kroll stated, “there appears to be an agenda in this paper. The publications timing is uniquely timed to decisions made by Wisconsin on feeding deer.”
While the authors try to make it sound like Chronic Wasting Disease is taking over the country, since it was first isolated in Colorado in 1967, less than 600 animals of the 30 million deer and elk in the United States have tested positive for the disease of these positives 84% are from the wild populations.
So what is the true agenda of Dr. Elizabeth Williams? Is she using “gray science” to regulate elk and deer farmers out of business in favor of the wild species? Could that have anything to do with the fact that her husband, Tom Thorne, is employed by the Wyoming Game, Fish, and Parks Department?
On the subject of CWD, Thorne was quoted in 1998 saying, “the risk is small (to deer and elk hunters). I wouldn’t worry about it at all. The spread of disease among captive animals may represent a more immediate threat. This is probably going to cause quite a bit of problem in the game-farm industry.” Despite his prediction, there are only four counties in the United States that have farmed deer and elk with animals that have tested positive for CWD in the past year.
The agenda of this pair seems clearly to be an attack on cervid farms but to what benefit we have yet to discover. Elk and deer raised on farms are continuously monitored and managed for disease. This is in strong contrast to animals in the wild where regulation and control is difficult if not impossible. While people may continue to have their personal preferences as to the type of hunt they choose, there should not be an unfair attempt to take players out of the game under the cloak of “scientific research.”
