Baroque performers glum as Europe bans gut strings

by Walter Olson on December 5, 2011

Violin and cello strings made of animal intestine might transmit Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, if you ate enough of them. [Telegraph via Tim Cavanaugh, Reason]

{ 9 comments }

1 L. C. Burgundy 12.05.11 at 9:28 am

Crap! Well, it’s back to eating brass instruments for me.

2 KDP 12.05.11 at 10:24 am

When gut strings are outlawed, only outlaws will have gut strings.

3 mojo 12.05.11 at 10:46 am

Is there nothing too petty for these loons?

4 Richard Nieporent 12.05.11 at 11:21 am

What will they ban next, String Theory? It is obvious that the EU bureaucrats will never have to worry about coming down with a brain disease.

5 kimsch 12.05.11 at 12:03 pm

My husband and I can’t give blood because we were in Germany during the period from 1980 to 1990 and therefore we might have, as Denny Crane puts it, “the Mad Cow.”

6 CJohn 12.05.11 at 1:38 pm

Given the EU’s recent woes, there’s a joke to be made about fiddling while Rome burns (I just can’t quite make it, so I leave it to your imagination).

7 John Burgess 12.05.11 at 2:40 pm

@kimsch: I understand that. I was in the UK from ’94-’98. I and the rest of my family are banned from giving blood. That’s a pity, because I was a regular donor.

As for gut strings, maybe they can go back to cat… they don’t carry Mad Cow or C-J to the best of my knowledge.

Anyway, the ban on gut strings is ridiculous. Every study on C-J has reported on nerve tissue being the conduit. Intestines are not nerve-rich tissue.

8 Blackfoot 12.05.11 at 7:43 pm

@L.C. – you do realize the brass instruments may have a significant amount of lead

9 GregS 12.06.11 at 11:03 am

It’s good to know that European bureaucrats can be just as stupid as American ones.

Comments on this entry are closed.