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Former agriculture minister Kim Sung-hoon in an article in a weekly newspaper last month said the U.S. government was concealing the results of tests by Yale University and the University of Pittsburgh showing that at least 250,000 to 650,000 people in the United States have died from the human form of mad cow disease but this was being covered up as deaths from senile dementia.
To repeat the point that has been mentioned countless times already, there has yet to be a single recorded case of a person contracting variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (vCJD), or the human form of mad cow disease, after consuming American beef. The Yale and University of Pittsburgh research papers cited by Kim say 5 to 13 percent of senile dementia patients in the United States suffer from standard Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (CJD), which has been officially confirmed to have no relation to beef or mad cow disease. Citing a different disease, Kim said there were 650,000 vCJD victims in the U.S. when in fact there are none. This is an unbelievable act of deception.
Similar cases of fabricated information floated around the Internet during the early stages of the mad cow controversy. Not just any minister but the former agriculture minister and incumbent president of a university has led the way in spreading such preposterous horror stories. Kim also said that a 22-year-old American woman died of vCJD in April this year, which was confirmed to be untrue. These false rumors and claims spread through media broadcasts and the Internet played a major role in stirring up mad cow fears.
Kim claimed that the U.S. cannot resort to trade retaliation even if Korea does not abide by the beef accord signed with Washington. When he was agriculture minister, Kim was responsible for strongly demanding emergency tariffs to be levied on Chinese garlic, causing tremendous damage to Korea by triggering a Chinese trade retaliation. Irresponsible behavior is nothing new to him.
In stark contrast to Kim stands a group of elementary schoolchildren in Gwangju. One of the students there posted a letter on the homepage of Cheong Wa Dae saying they realized much of the information about mad cow disease they had was exaggerated or false. The reason the student wrote the letter was a class teaching them to base their claims on scientific facts. In the beginning, most of the students there are said to have supported illegal acts in order to defend what is right and to topple Cheong Wa Dae and set it on fire.
Startled by all this, their teacher proposed a debate on the issue after researching the topic. The teacher told them they must know their facts before they go about insulting something. After research, they reached the conclusion that Korea should inspect beef being imported but also realized that most of the information they knew about mad cow disease differed from the truth. What thoughts will have passed through Kim’s mind as he watched these children?
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