Sorry for the long post but I would like to add another post about Geronimo because I just wonder how many of us have read background papers about his case?
Let’s not forget that Geronimo was primed or ‘boosted’ FIVE times with tuberculin.
In the Vet’s letter in the Vet Times, “Defra bTB scientist Ricardo de la Rua Domenech stated that: ‘The negative impact of the administration of tuberculin on the specificity of antibody tests in TB-free animals (i.e. the likelihood of false positive results) is a potential concern when antibody tests are used outside TB breakdown situations.’
“In 2020, 199 camelids were killed following a ‘positive’ diagnosis by skin or blood tests involving prior administration of tuberculin. Of 56 submitted for postmortem examination, only 4 had postmortem evidence of bTB, and successful culture of bTB was only achieved in 7 of the 35 animals where this was attempted.”
Note, an exceedingly high rate of ‘false positive’ results.
Eleanor Brown, bTB Scientist stated to the High Court that there has been NO trial carried out to find out whether repeated injections of tuberculin give rise to a higher proportion of positive antibodies.
Worth repeating, there is ABSOLUTELY NO RESEARCH to show whether being primed ONCE, never mind FIVE times, as in Geronimo’s case, will produce a false positive. This was why Helen had grave doubts about the ‘positive’ results and why she firmly believed that her boy was free of bTB. Without the essential scientific research papers, she did everything in her power to try and save him.
What seems strange to me is that when we have a COVID vaccination, we produce ‘memory cells’ and our bodies then produce antibodies to protect us from infection by COVID. Similarity, Camelids are primed with tuberculin with the intention of boosting the levels of antibodies in the blood. In Geronimo’s case, he was primed FIVE times with tuberculin in the run up to the final Enferplex blood test. He was given 0.1ml of ‘a purified, sterile cocktail of proteins extracted from dead bovine TB bacteria.’
So, in total, Geronimo received 0.5ml of avian and bovine tuberculin and was expected to produce memory cells (exactly the same as us) but was not expected to produce antibodies?
As a comparison, people are injected with either only 0.3ml (Pfizer-BioNTech) or 0.5ml (Moderna and AstraZeneca) and ARE expected to show an antibody response. Does that make sense to you? Not to me, it doesn’t.
Geronimo should never have been killed by DEFRA, especially in the abhorrent way that he was.
The truly sad thing is that then DEFRA refused to have an independent Vet present at the post-mortem or to take blood samples independently. With a huge public back-lash when DEFRA was seen to abuse Geronimo as he was dragged from the farm, they do not want Geronimo to be proved clear of TB.
I am shocked and saddened beyond words that Geronimo was slaughtered so unjustly. He was a gorgeous stud alpaca, in the prime of his life. Helen as his dedicated owner, has acted responsibly, driven through love for her beloved boy and a need to prove that the bTB testing system is flawed for the benefit of all farmers.
Angela Rayner lashes out and calls Sunak “pint sized loser”.