OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

R. Reeves co-edited the Sierra Club
Handbook of Whales and Dolphins (1983 and
updates), died January 25 of lymphoma.
Formerly senior research biologist for the
Hubbs Marine Research Institute,
Leatherwood spent his last years with the
Ocean Park Conservation Foundation in Hong
Kong, as representative of the Cetacean
Specialist Group within the International
Union for the Conservation of Nature. His
special project was seeking the survival of the
baiji, or Chinese river dolphin. “There are no
truly reliable numbers on the size of baiji populations,”
Leatherwood warned in November
1995. “Published estimates indicate a decline
from 400 or so in the late 1970s, to 300 or so
in the mid-1980s, to 120 or so in 1993.

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BOOKS: The Lost History of the Canine Race

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

The Lost History of the Canine Race:
Our 15,000-Year Love Affair With Dogs
by Mary Elizabeth Thurston
Andrews and McMeel (c/o Universal Press Syndicate,
4520 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64111), 1996.
301 pages, indexed, glossary, bibliography, photos; $24.95.

Mary Thurston has seemingly tracked downevery bit of history
of human interactions with the dog and included it in Lost History.
From educated speculation on how ancient humans and dogs got
together, to the sometimes disastrous outcomes of modern attitudes to dog
ownership, this book is interesting reading for dog lovers.
”Drawing on archival documents, artifacts, engravings,” etc.,
Thurston has put together an informative book not in the usual genre of
dog treatises.

BOOKS: Prisoned Chickens Poisoned Eggs & The Great House of Birds

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

Prisoned Chickens Poisoned Eggs:
An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry
by Karen Davis
Book Publishing Company, Box 99, Summertown, TN 38483),
1996. 175 pages, referenced and indexed. $12.95 paperback.

The Great House of Birds:
Classic Writings About Birds
edited by John Hay
Sierra Club Books (85 2nd St., San Francisco, CA 94105), 1996.
306 pages, hardcover, $24.00.

Next time you gobble down an egg or a chicken nugget, if you
ever do, consider the birds: housed in overcrowded and dangerous “factory”
barns, their beaks cut off, their wings clipped, overfed, underexcersized,
never seeing the light of the sun, from hatching to slaughter.
While people are chastized for their misuse of antibiotics, which
apparently has encouraged the evolution of untreatable SuperBugs, very
little is said about antibiotic overdosing of chickens, and other food animals.

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BOOKS: Cats’ Meow!

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

Cats’ Meow!
An Anthology of Cat Tales
edited by Jeannette Cakouros
and Ruth K. Flowers
Maine Rhode Publishers
(RR #1, Box 635, Woolwich,
ME 04579), 1996.
160 pages, paperback, $13.50.

Besides a lot of stories,
essays, poems, and a few elegantly
simple line drawings, Cats’ Meow!
offers biographical sketches of the
many authors.
Everything is about cats,
except for the bios, which do not
separate aleurophiles from aleurophobes––but
how did the latter get in
here, anyway, with a handful of
creepy stories, and some about cats
with disgruntled owners?

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BOOKS: In Your Face

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

In Your Face
by Chris DeRose
Duncan Publishing (order c/o
Last Chance for Animals, 8033
Sunset Blvd., Suite 35, Los
Angeles, CA 90046), 1997.
303 pages, $21.00, paperback.

Chris DeRose rather
enjoys writing about Chris DeRose
and his exploits during the course of
In Your Face. His adventures are
often the type of stuff that without
adequate context can give animal
rights activists a bad name, especially
when direct action comes
across as a shortcut taken because
it’s exciting, bypassing the obligations

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COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

Activism
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals unanimously ruled March 14 that the
U.S. Forest Service had no legal cause to conceal
the location of northern goshawk nests
from the Maricopa Audubon Society, of
Phoenix, Arizona. The Audubon group sought
the data in 1993, alleging that a Southwestern
region forester and his deputy improperly
ignored protection of endangered species. The
forester took early retirement and the deputy
transfered, after then-Forest Service chief Jack
Ward Thomas hired an outside consultant to
do a special inquiry––but the Forest Service
released only an edited edition of the findings.

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ALF bombs mink feed depot

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

SALT LAKE CITY––Five pipe
bombs detonating over 10-15 minutes circa 2
a.m. on March 11 destroyed the main office
and four trucks at the Utah Fur Breeders
Agricultural Collective feed storage depot in
Sandy, Utah, shooting shrapnel into an adjacent
parking lot. A sixth bomb placed under
a truck did not go off.
Living in trailers at the site but
unhurt were truck driver Ben Flitton, his
wife, their two-year-old son, and mechanic
Flaviano Garcia, who apparently left
responding to the blasts to about 60 firefighters.
Slaughterhouse owner Michael
Speechley, of Minsterworth, England, narrowly
escaped injury during a similar attack
on June 24, 1996, when––apparently aware
only of a fire––he drove a truck away from
two burning trucks that police later found
were ignited by Molotov cocktails. A third
Molotov cocktail had been placed on top of
the front off-side wheel of the truck
Speechley moved, but did not explode.

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Pig disease scares capitalists

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

LONDON–– Millions of
dollars invested in genetically engineering
pigs to produce organs for
human transplant may be lost, and
tens of thousands of people desperately
awaiting transplants amid a shortage
of donated human organs may die, if
the biomedical research industry can’t
find a way around PERVs, short for
“pig endogenous retroviruses.”
It may be that pigs will have
to be genetically re-engineered to
eliminate PERVs before engineering
transplantable organs can proceed.
In the March 1 edition of
Nature, neurosurgeon James
Schumacher and colleagues reported
successfully transplanting fetal pig
cells into the brains of 12 patients with
advanced Parkinson’s disease, demonstrating
for the first time that animal
tissues can grow within the human
body. Some patients, Schumacher
said, had experienced relief of
Parkinson’s symptoms for up to two
years after the transplants; all were
improved. The Schumacher team has
now implanted fetal pig cells into the
brains of seven Huntington’s disease
patients, hoping for similar results.

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WHAT’S IN A NAME? NO-KILLS AND THE HEART OF DARKNESS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

PHOENIX––Fast losing public support
for the traditional “full service shelter”
concept, which it has advanced without significant
modification since forming in 1954, the
Humane Society of the U.S. at its Animal Care
Expo in mid-February unveiled a campaign to
persuade no-kill shelters to relabel themselves
“limited access shelters.”
HSUS central/south regional office
director Phil Snyder and Cat Care Society
executive director Kathy Macklem introduced
the “limited access” term in panel discussion,
after which Macklem tried to enlist the
endorsement of No-Kill Directory publisher,
No-Kill Conference founder, and Doing
Things For Animals president Lynda Foro.

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