OUR VIEW: Forget mad cow, watch out for bees

The recent mad cow scare has reopened the issue about the media’s influence on the public’s collective consciousness. Namely, does the excessive amount of mad cow stories scare people into staying away from beef? Are these fears grounded in reality? Is it reasonable to be scared of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy?

The best way to answer that question is to find the answers to some basic questions about the disease. For example, what is the possibility of getting mad cow disease from eating beef from an infected cow? According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the likelihood of getting BSE from eating beef, assuming that infected cattle is somewhere in the food supply, “appears to be extremely small, perhaps about one case per 10 billion servings.”

Also, how many people have actually died from mad cow disease? The answer is: 150 people have died worldwide in the last 10 years. Nobody has contracted the disease in the United States. More people die every year from bee stings or dog bites.

The point is, don’t be fooled by media coverage.

Remember the anthrax scare of 2001? Of course, the newsworthiness of that story was due to the possible links to bioterrorism, and any hint of terrorism after Sept. 11 became instant news fodder. But what were the average Joe’s chances of death from anthrax exposure? Statistically speaking, there were five deaths in 2001 and 2002 from the disease. In the United States, that means each person had a one-in-60 million chance of dying from anthrax poisoning. Yet, some people were still scared to open letters.

So, despite the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the anthrax scare and mad cow mania, reasonable people continue to ride in airplanes, open letters and eat beef. And they should.