Editorial feature: Putting a practical face on breed-specific legislation
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:
On Sunday, November 27, 2005, surgeons Jean-Michel
Dubernard of the Hopital Edouard-Herriot in Lyon, France, Benoit
Lengele of Belgium, and Universite de Amiens chief of face and jaw
surgery Bernard Devauchelle collabaorated to perform the first-ever
partial face transplant. Taking the nose, lips, and chin of
brain-dead organ donor Maryline St. Aubert, 46, of Cambrai, the
team restored the most prominent features of Isabelle Dinoire, 38,
who in May 2005 was severely mauled by a Labrador retriever she had
recently adopted from a pound near her home in Valenciennes.
The pound dog involved in that case was neither a pit bull
terrier nor a Rottweiler, both breeds continuing to glut U.S.
shelters at a rate exceeding by more than fivefold their proportion
in the pet population. Nonetheless, the French face transplant
helped to focus attention on the increasingly vexing question of what
to about dogs who are easily capable of killing or maiming someone
with their first-ever bite.
ANIMAL PEOPLE editor Merritt Clifton has since September 1982
maintained a breed-specific log of life-threatening and fatal attacks
by dogs kept as pets. Guard dogs, fighting dogs, and police dogs
are excluded. As of December 6, 2005, 2,048 attacks had qualified
for listing, including 318 since the January/February 2004 edition
of ANIMAL PEOPLE editorially called on lawmakers to “Bring breeders
of high-risk dogs to heel.”