Body Shop skeletons rattle

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

LONDON––London Greenpeace,
whose pamphleteers David Morris and Helen
Steel were vindicated in 1997 after an eightyear
battle with McDonald’s restaurants when
a British court found McDonald’s “culpably
responsible” for animal abuse by patronizing
factory farms, on February 27 attacked a new
target: The Body Shop cosmetics empire,
already fighting lawsuits from franchisees and
suppliers alleging fraud in Brazil, Canada,
France, Spain, Great Britain, and the U.S.
“The Body Shop has manufactured
an image of being a caring company that is
helping to protect the environment and indigenous
peoples, and preventing the suffering of
animals,” London Greenpeace said. “They do
not help the plight of animals or indigenous
peoples, and their products are far from what
they’re cracked up to be.”

What cooks at NEAVS?

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

BOSTON––The PETA faction
fighting for control of the 103-year-old New
England Anti-Vivisection Society and assets
of $5.9 million continues to try to run it
despite a January 22 ruling by Superior Court
Justice Margaret Hinkle that it “breached fiduciary
duties” in a 1996 bid to oust a faction
associated with The Fund for Animals.
The Hinkle ruling installed psychologist
Theo Capaldo as NEAVS president, two
years after proxy ballots that were to have
elected her disappeared on the eve of the 1996
annual membership meeting.
But Capaldo found she had little
ability to act. The PETA faction still holds the
board majority, and in February voted to
remove Richard Janisch, who had refused to
obey board orders he believed were illegal, as
NEAVS treasurer.

Whale research is booming

March 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

KAILUA KONA, Hawaii– – Ocean
Mammal Institute volunteers tried apparently unsuccessfully
to amplify last-minute opposition to
Surveillance Towed Array Sonar System Low
Frequency Sound testing northwest of Hawaii,
begun by the U.S. Navy in February, scheduled to
continue through March.
The area is “immediately adjacent to the
Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National
Marine Sanctuary,” explains a newly leaked August
1997 memo from Hawaii Division of Aquatic
Resources staffer Emily Gardner to state Board of
Land and Natural Resources chair Michael D.
Wilson. ANIMAL PEOPLE obtained the memo
from Carroll Cox of EnviroWatch, who said he
received it from an anonymous source.

Geneticists clone bull

March 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

Regeneration breakthrough in mice

March 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

WHAT’S TO BECOME OF A BARREL OF MONKEYS?

March 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

MADISON, Wisconsin––Virginia Hinshaw, dean
of graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison,
on February 3 gave Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk until
March 2 to find a way to keep 100 rhesus macaques and 50
stump-tailed macaques at the Vilas Zoo, their longtime home.
The Vilas Zoo has long housed the macaques under
contract to the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center,
funded by the National Institutes of Health. American Zoo
Association policy has discouraged the use of zoo animals in
research since 1986, but the Vilas Zoo arrangement, dating to
1963, predated the policy.
The macaque colonies are descended from those who
provided subjects for the notorious isolation experiments of the
late Harry Harlow, who moved his work to the University of
Arizona in 1971 and died in 1981. They are the oldest stable
breeding colonies of macaques in captivity. About 1,300 kin
are at separate facilities on the university campus.

The Brown Dog riots

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

LONDON––February 1998 marks
the 95th anniversary of the 1903 events that
touched off the Brown Dog Riots, in
Battersea, England, four years later.
According to historian Peter
Mason, the Brown Dog was a stray who
was repeatedly used in demonstration
surgery, without anesthetic, to show 70
medical students at University College,
London, the workings of the pancreatic and
salivary glands.
The repeated use violated the 1876
Cruelty to Animals Act. The Society for
United Prayer for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals raised funds to erect a commemorative
drinking fountain, as an enduring
form of public protest. A plaque on the
fountain, beneath a statue of the dog,
memorialized not only the Brown Dog but
also 232 other dogs killed in similar
University College dissections during 1902.

Biotech head-trips

December 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

LONDON––British journals and
news media in late October and early
November 1997 disclosed either the promises
of eternal life and meat without suffering,
or the separation of soul from body by latterday
Dr. Frankensteins––or maybe all three at
once, some commentators ventured.
But as Halloween came and went,
announcements of successful headless
cloning experiments and behavior-changing
brain tissue transplants generated surprisingly
little of the excitement that accompanied the
February 23 announcement of the first successful
cloning of a mammal from adult cells,
a ewe named Dolly, born at the Roslin
Institute in Scotland.

Great apes practice peace under fire

December 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

YAOUNDE, Cameroon––Seizing an infant
gorilla, hunter Ntsama Ondo returned home to Olamze village
triumphant in mid-October, certain he’d make his fortune
just as soon as he could sell her to international traffickers––apparently
regular visitors to Olamze, situated near the
border of Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.
Her troop had another idea, the October 22 edition
of the Cameroonian newspaper L’Action reported .
Apparently following his trail, an estimated 60 gorillas
marched into Olamze single file just before midnight, ignoring
gunfire meant to scare them away as they paraded in
silent protest.
When that didn’t get the infant back, the gorillas
returned the next night. This time they battered the doors
and windows of the houses until the Olamze village chief
ordered Ondo to release the infant.
“Immediately the assailants returned to the forest
with shouts of joy, savouring their victory,” L’Action said.

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