Animals in laboratories

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

Bert and Ernie, the first two pigs
whom Pennsylvania State University professor
Stan Curtis taught to play computer
games and adjust their own room temperature
with a joy stick, whose achievements were
described on page one of the June edition of
ANIMAL PEOPLE, arrived on August 5 at
PIGS: A Sanctuary, in Charles Town,
West Virginia. Learning that Curtis had
replaced Bert and Ernie in his experiments
with two pigs of a smaller breed, Dale Riffle
and Jim Brewer wondered if the “retired”
pigs might be sent to slaughter or be used in
other research––so they asked, offered them
a home for life, and won approval from the
Penn State Institutional Animal Care and Use
Committee. “Bert and Ernie are true ambassadors
for advancing the humane treatment of
animals typically used for food,” said Riffle.
“They have contributed greatly to educating
the world that pigs are not stupid.”

Read more

Still no injectable birth control for dogs and cats

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

Hopes for an inexpensive injection
sterilant for dogs and cats were prematurely
raised worldwide in early September by a
CNN report about an experimental contraceptive
vaccine for female rodents developed by
California researcher Jeff Bleil.
In theory, the Bleil vaccine could
work in dogs and cats, as CNN noted, but
Bleil so far has tested it only in mice and rats,
and he is reportedly still at least two years
from being able to market it for laboratory
mouse population control, his first objective.
He apparently hasn’t begun work yet to adapt
the product for use with other animals.
Zonagen Inc., of Massachusetts,
announced in 1990, 1991 and 1994 that it had
almost perfected a similar contraceptive vaccine,
called Zonavax, for female dogs and
cats, but there has been no further word of it.

Read more

Witch doctors tell Swiss voters what to say: “Ooh-ee ooh ah ah!”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:

GENEVA, JOHANNESBURG,
WINDHOEK, LONDON, ATLANTA– –
Swiss voters on June 7 rejected a proposed
moratorium on research involving genetically
modified animals by a 2-to-1 margin.
Swiss referendums have historically
favored animals. The very first, held more
than 100 years ago, banned the slaughter of
livestock without prestunning. However,
Swiss-based multinational drug firms reportedly
spent more than $35 million to defeat the
proposed genetic research moratorium. The
coalition of 50 animal protection groups who
backed the measure spent only $1.3 million.
Swiss citizens may have relatively
little concern about the outcomes of genetic
research, but in Eehama-Omulunga, Angola,
sensational reports of transgenic experiments
fed rumors that goats kept by Mateus Shihelp
and Ricardina Otto have given birth––twice
since March––to creatures with goat-like bodies
but human heads. Neither survived.

Read more

Talking to our ancestors

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

STATE COLLEGE, Pa., WOODSIDE,
Calif.––Eight thousand America
OnLine members on April 28 flooded Koko
the “talking” gorilla with more than 13,000
questions, in the first-ever public interview
of an animal of another species.
Actually “speaking” through a special
computer with a symbolic keyboard,
Koko answered about a dozen inquiries in 45
minutes. Monitored by reporters, who
packed the kitchen of the Gorilla Foundation
headquarters in Woodside, California,
Koko’s longtime teacher/translator Penny
Patterson converted typed text into sign language,
then summarized Koko’s responses
and e-mailed them out.
Koko talked about apple juice, her
favorite foods, her pet cats, her dreams, and
her personal aspirations. Nobody asked how
she’d like to become “bush meat,” the
African euphemism for poached primate.

Read more

BOOKS: The Monkey’s Bridge & The Flight of the Iguana

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

The Monkey’s Bridge:
Mysteries of Evolution in Central America
by David Rains Wallace
Sierra Club Books (895 2nd St., San Francisco, CA 94105), 1997.
$25.00, hardcover, 276 pages.

The Flight of the Iguana:
A Sidelong View of Science & Nature
by David Quammen
Touchstone Books (1230 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10020), 1998.
302 pages, paperback, $13.00.

Read more

Recruiting failure

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

CAMBRIDGE, U.K.––A heads-up for the U.S.
animal rights movement comes from researchers Shelley L.
Galvin of Mars Hill College in North Carolina, and Harold
A. Herzog, of Western Carolina University, whose findings
about movement participation appear in the spring/summer
1998 edition of Society & Animals, a sociological journal
published by The White Horse Press of Cambridge, England.
(10 High St., Knapwell, Cambridge CB3 8NR, U.K.)
Galvin and Herzog distributed questionaires to participants
in the 1990 and 1996 Marches for the Animals in
Washington D.C., getting back 231 responses in 1996––as
much as 10% of total March participation.

Read more

Geneticists clone bull

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

BOSTON––Geneticists James Robl
of the University of Massachusetts and Steven
Stice of Advanced Cell Technology Inc. told
the International Embryo Transfer Society on
January 20 that they’d managed to clone some
prime Texas bull––the first bull ever cloned by
their method, believed to be the most efficient
of the three methods now experimentally tried.
Robl and Stice said the two offspring,
George and Charlie, represented in
Robl’s words, “a significant step” toward turning
genetically modified dairy cattle into walking
drug factories, who synthesize medicines in
their milk. But both cloned offspring are male.
Acknowledging that inconvenience, Robl and
Stice said they had several pregnant cows carrying
female cloned fetuses. The fetuses were
genetically altered to produce cows who eventually
should produce milk containing human
serum albumin, an important protein used in
maintaining hospital emergency blood supplies.

Read more

Regeneration breakthrough in mice

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

PHILADELPHIA––The key to human
regrowth of lost or injured limbs and organs may
have been found by accident in connection with
genetically modifying mice for disease research,
immunologist Ellen Heber-Katz of the Wistar
Institute indicated in a February 16 address to the
American Association for the Advancement of
Science.
Heber-Katz was studying multiple sclerosis
using the fairly common MRL strain of custom-bred
research mouse, she said, when she
found that ID holes punched in her subjects’ ears
quickly healed over without a trace. Removing
bits of their tails and livers brought similar
results: new parts grew, matching the old.

Read more

CLINTON BUDGET BOOSTS NIH, NPS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

WASHINGTON D.C.– – The
U.S. budget for fiscal 1999 announced by
President Bill Clinton on February 2
includes a record $170 billion for civilian
research and development over the next
five years. The National Institutes of
Health would get an immediate funding
increase of $1.15 billion, giving it a 1999
budget of $14.8 billion, and would be
scheduled to get $20 billion in 2004.
NIH head Harold Varmus told
media that the money, if allocated by
Congress, would be divided among studies
of cancer, diabetes, brain disorders,
asthma, and AIDS.

Read more

1 17 18 19 20 21 41