In response to statements by Oprah Winfrey’s lawyer that her remarks regarding mad cow disease are characterized as “opinion, hyperbole or rhetoric, not statements of fact” (“Where’s the beef?” Main news, Jan. 4), I would like to pass on some information:
On Dec. 15 a member of our family died from complications resulting from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or spongiform encephalopathy. This is the same disease that has killed numerous people in England but that supposedly has not surfaced in the U.S.
Our family member has lived in the United States his whole life and has never traveled abroad. If our livestock are not infected with mad cow (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), why, then, are people in the U.S. dying from CJD? I would be interested to hear what rhetoric the cattle farmers have to offer on this point.
