d treasure -- turned out to be a Pandora's box. For the first time, Chiodini's research implicated contaminated milk as a possible cause of a debilitating, sometimes fatal, gastrointestinal disease.
The Crohn's connection
"The public should know that there are a number of medical researchers and veterinary researchers that are concerned about the implications of this organism," says Mike Collins, a doctor of veterinary medicine and microbiology at the University of Wisconsin. Collins has been leading a three-year international study on the possible connection between Mp and Crohn's disease, the results of which are not yet available.
"This organism basically resides in animal populations, mainly ruminants, and it causes a disease in those ruminants that looks very much like Crohn's disease [in humans]. But we don't know what, if any, the consequences are when this organism spills over to the human community. We don't know how that might happen, the frequency or the consequences. But we need to figure this out as quickly as possible. There's sufficient scientific evidence to cause concern."
This seemingly banal statement summarizes a raging, eye-crossing scientific debate among a core group of researchers that has yet to come to the public's attention. The debate over the possibility that a bacterium originating in cows might cause Crohn's disease in humans has fueled merciless professional attacks, closed-door meetings and a lot of behind-the-scenes hand-wringing.
What it has not fueled is well-funded research by either the government or the dairy industry. The little research that has been undertaken has been on shoestring budgets, yielding debatable results. Very few researchers have been able to culture the bug from Crohn's patients, grow it in the laboratory or detect an immunological response to it. Conflicting research has been reported from every corner of the globe. The only certainty in the whole matter is that it is a very controversial, unproven theory.
Critics of the theory then use the inconclusive results to argue against committing serious research dollars to investigating the seemingly well-reasoned hypothesis that a bacterium known to cause disease in cattle -- that is shed live in their milk -- can be transmitted to and cause a similar disease in humans.
But without well-funded research, there are no definitive answers to these vexing questions: Does Mp cause or contribute to Crohn's disease in humans? Does Mp survive the pasteurization process? Is it currently in the retail milk supply? Are our children at risk? And if the answer to any of these questions is even possibly yes, why isn't the American public aware that this is indeed a concern?
Estimates are that between 500,000 and 1 million people in the U.S. have Crohn's disease, and it is spreading rapidly. Approximately 55 Americans, mostly between the ages of 15 and 25, will be diagnosed with this incurable disease every day, and at least half of Crohn's patients will require surgery. All will suffer, mostly in silence due to the embarrassing nature of the symptoms, without any awareness that there may be a connection between their illness and the consumption of dairy products.
Researchers investigating the possibility that Mp causes Crohn's suggest that people may be infected with the organism at a young age, when milk consumption is high. Because it is a known to be a slow-growing organism that probably requires a trigger to cause symptoms -- such as the hormonal changes of adolescence -- people do not come down with the disease until later in life. Further, they believe that there is a genetic predisposition, as the disease has a tendency to run in families. They are quick to point out, however, that even the most infectious agents, such as tuberculosis, only causes disease in one out of approximately 300 people who are exposed to it. So exposure to the bacterium does not necessarily equate with contracting the disease. But despite all the mitigating circumstances, a handful of respected researchers around the world suspect Mp is the main culpri