Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD)

New outbreaks as a result of careless disposal of meat waste from imported food, e.g. by airline caterers, might be expected. However, this latest outbreak has brought a surprise. Last night, Chief Veterinary Officer Debby Reynolds announced that the strain has been identified as one not recently found in animals but as one that is virtually identical with the strain kept and researched at the nearby Pirbright laboratories, a site shared by the Institute of Animal Health and Merial Animal Health Ltd. The obvious assumption is that a bio-security failure has permitted virus to escape the facility.

Such an event would not be new and research on pathogenic viruses is a risky business.

Rabbit Calicivirus escape from Wardang Island, off Australia in 1995 was one such. No one knows whence came the devastating Canine Parvovirus, in 1978. FMD virus will not be the only pathogenic infectious agent held at that facility and it may be a good idea for the public to know what other viruses are held in such laboratories.

Policy discussions will again include the vaccination debate. Vaccination was rejected in 2001, on the grounds that the strain may have been ineffective and that it might have affected the country's meat and livestock export trade, as a result of vaccine-induced antibodies. Vaccination has already been mentioned on news bulletins, this time around.

There is another possibility - the homeopathic approach to treatment and prevention. This was offered in 2001 but ignored by the then MAFF, despite the fact that a clinical research project was formulated that would not have cost MAFF a penny and would have settled the efficacy question in days.

The offer to provide self-funded clinical research, that will bring results in days, should the outbreak start to spread rapidly, is again offered to DEFRA. If the results turn out to be negative, there is no cost and if they turn out to be positive, it will establish homeopathy as a worthy medical contender.

Homeopathy has been researched before, as results will testify: www.alternativevet.org/research.htm. However, funding is limited (no £billions can be made), so trials are necessarily small-scale. Homeopathic methods circumvent the virus strain issue. Furthermore, it cannot induce antibodies. It is to be hoped that DEFRA will grasp this opportunity and perhaps save another disastrous situation, at the same time perhaps ushering in a new medical model for the prevention of infectious diseases.