Bovine Tuberculosis

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31087, 16 June 1966, Page 14

Bovine Tuberculosis

Sir, —Raw milk has been “implicated” so many thousands of times (wrongly, as is now admitted) that, while sympathising with Mr Thomson in the death of two relatives, 1 cannot accept his claim that raw milk infected with bovine tuberculosis was the cause unless he answers these questions affirmatively: (1) Was death certified as due to non-respiratory tuberculosis? (2) Were tubercle bacilli found in the affected organs? (3) Were the bacilli positively identified, by a person experienced in making the distinction, as of bovine strain? (4) Was his relatives’ milk supply at any relevant time proved by guinea-pig test to contain tuberculosis? Can Mr Thomson affirm that his relatives could not have contracted the infection from cattle by other means (e.g., inhalation) 9 Deaths in New Zealand from tuberculosis-infected milk were non-existent or extreme •ly rare, the vast majority of consumers of infected raw milk simply developing a natural resistance to the bacillus. —Yours, etc., PAUL MALING.

June 8, 1966. [Mr G. G. Thomson replies: “I cannot but admire Paul Maling’s tenacity of purpose in support. of the lost cause of raw milk, and his scientific approach to the analysis of data implicating unpasteurised contaminated milk as a vehicle for the transmission of bovine tubercle bacilli in such numbers as to cause acute tuberculosis in man. Clearly there would be little purpose in getting answers to his first four questions for, if they were to be answered in the affirmative, he has already shown by his last question where he will seek refuge. I can only reiterate my view that there are data, references to which I have already offered, which have convinced scientists perhaps as distinguished as Mr Maling that tubercle-infected milk can be a danger to man. If the development of resistance is desirable this should surely be induced in some safer way than his proposed ingestion of living tubercle bacilli.”]