The Wildlife Disease Cover-Up That May Put You and Your Family at Risk
By George Dovel
When I was growing up, personal safety was pretty much a matter of using common sense and, if we were lucky, having a parent or others who were also older and more experienced teach us about life’s hazards. Now we rely on government “experts” to protect our health and well-being – but what happens when the experts ignore our welfare to promote an alien agenda that can harm us?
In the Dec. 2009 Outdoorsman, I exposed the four year cover-up by Idaho Dept. of Fish and Game (IDFG) and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) officials of the fact that wolves are spreading a new strain of hydatid disease in both states. I anticipated the usual damage control propaganda and it wasn’t long in coming.
Two days after the internet version of that article was circulated in Montana, an article titled, “Infestation in wolves poses no danger to humans, livestock, officials say,” appeared in the Billings Gazette. The article quoted three of the researchers who documented the existence of cystic hydatid disease in big game species in the two states and documented a massive infestation of the tapeworm that causes the disease in two-thirds of the wolf intestines they examined.
“More Deer and Elk Infected Than People Realize”
FWP veterinarian Deborah McCauley said she doesn’t believe the Echinococcus tapeworm will have any harmful effect on the Montana’s elk herds and added, “In ungulates it doesn’t cause a significant disease.” In that Montana article, IDFG veterinarian Mark Drew refrained from commenting on the impact of the disease on elk and deer in Montana but said, “There are more deer and elk infected than people realize.”
The study’s lead author, veterinary parasitologist William Foreyt of Washington State University, admitted he believed the parasites were brought in by the wolves transplanted from Canada and expressed amazement at the degree of infection. “I was absolutely shocked to see such a high prevalence,” he said. “Some of these wolves had tens of thousands of tapeworms. They were massively infected.”
Study Author Claims Humans Have to Eat the Eggs in the Feces to Become Infected
Although Foreyt admitted such high prevalence increases the possibility the tapeworm will spread, he said transmission of the tapeworm to humans or livestock is unlikely. “For humans to contract the tapeworm, they would have to somehow come into oral contact with a wolf’s feces,” he said.
In an apparent reference to Dr. Geist’s warning he said poking around in dried wolf feces might release the eggs into the air, but said the person would have to ingest the eggs, not just inhale them, for the tapeworm to take root. “You’d have to eat the eggs in the feces,” he insisted
But that is not true. Keeping your mouth closed and breathing through your nose will not prevent you from swallowing the eggs if they are in the air. The “motile cilia” found in the lining of our windpipe and air passages constantly sweep mucous with trapped dust, parasite eggs, bacteria, etc. up out of the lungs to the back of the throat where it is swallowed. (Geist personal communication)
And their claim in this and subsequent newspaper accounts, that only those animals grazing in the vicinity of wolf feces will ingest the eggs is similarly misleading. As each pile of fresh wolf feces begins to dry, the eggs, like weed seeds, are released and transported by wind, water and assorted mammals, birds and especially insects over what is often a considerable distance from the original site.
Foreyt – “It Really is Not Going to Affect People”
A similar article in Idaho’s Lewiston Tribune nine days later mentioned my December 2009 article and Dr. Geist’s warning. Although Foreyt did not repeat his earlier claim that in order for humans to get the disease they would have to have oral contact with wolf feces, he was quoted as follows:
"The news media have overblown this - that it is going to affect people and animals and it really is not. If this wildlife strain ever does affect people, they usually don't produce any serious problems."
To which IDFG veterinarian Drew added that people diagnosed with the disease can be treated with medication.
The first “expert” contradicted himself in the very next sentence and the second neglected to explain the circumstances when medication will help and, as is most often the case, when surgery is needed. Yet the reporter repeated the self-serving sound bites and ignored Dr. Geist’s explanation of the facts he provided
