Johns Hopkins medical school is last of top 20 in U.S. still using animal labs

April 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2008:
BALTIMORE–Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore is “the lone
holdout among medical schools in the top 20 in the annual U.S. News &
World Report ranking still convening live animal labs,” wrote
Baltimore Sun reporter Jonathan Bor on March 27, 2008.
“Just 10 of the nation’s 126 M.D.-granting medical schools
use live animals during surgical rotations, according to the
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine,” Bor added.
Ironically, the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to
Animal Testing, founded in 1981, is the oldest such center in the
world.
Among the other top-ranked U.S. medical schools, New York
Medical College in November 2007 announced that echocardiography and
simulators would replace the use of live dogs to teach heart function
to first-year medical students, beginning in 2008.
Case Western Reserve University announced in December 2007
that it had already quit using live dogs, cats, and ferrets in
medical training, and would eliminate the use of pigs after the
spring 2008 semester.

Pet food contamination

March 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:

Hartz Mountain Inc. on February 11, 2008 named American SPCA
Poison Control Center director Steven R. Hansen “2007 Veterinarian of
the Year” for his response to the March 2007 international recall of
pet food that was contaminated with the coal byproduct melamine by
the Chinese makers of wheat glutens used as an ingredient. Adding
melamine produced a chemical reaction that caused tests to indicate
that the glutens contained more protein than they did–and killed
1,950 cats and 2,200 dogs, according to complaints reaching the U.S.
Food & Drug Administration.

Heparin crisis rekindles concern about disease from pig transplants

March 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
DEERFIELD, Ill.; chang-zhau–Concern
about the possibility of pig diseases crossing
into humans through medical procedures using pig
byproducts rose worldwide after the drug maker
Baxter International on February 25, 2008
suspended sales of the blood-thinning product
heparin.
Baxter International, of Deerfield,
Illinois, reportedly distributes more than a
million doses of heparin annually, amounting to
about half of the U.S. supply.

Cockfighting remains implicated in spread of H5N1 avian flu

March 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
SAN JUAN, Bhubaneswar –Avian influenza may bring the demise
of cockfighting faster than animal advocacy in cockfighting
strongholds from Puerto Rico to rural Orissa state, India–but only
if governments hold cockfighters to the same restrictions as other
poultry farmers.
More than 100 New Year’s Day 2008 cockfights were cancelled
in Puerto Rico after bird imports were suspended due to an outbreak
of the avian flu H5N2 in the Dominican Republic. H5N2 is a milder
cousin of H5N1, which has killed more than 225 people worldwide
since 2003.

Editorial feature: How to eradicate canine rabies in 10 years or less

September 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

“Rabies could be gone in a decade,” BBC
News headlined worldwide on September 8, 2007.
“Rabies could be wiped out across the world,”
the BBC report continued, “if sufficient
vaccinations are carried out on domestic dogs,
according to experts.”
BBC News went on to quote staff of the
Royal Dick Veterinary School at Edinburgh
University in Scotland, who were among the
cofounders of the Alliance for Rabies Control and
promoters of the first World Rabies Day, held on
September 7, 2007.
None of the Alliance for Rabies Control
spokespersons appear to have actually set any
sort of timetable for possibly eradicating
rabies, but no matter. Experts have recognized
for decades that rabies is wholly eradicable from
all species except bats through targeted mass
immunization–and the chief obstacle to
eradicating bat rabies is that no one has
developed an aerosolized vaccine that could be
sprayed into otherwise inaccessible caves and
tree trunks. Inventing such a vaccine is
considered difficult but possible.

Fungus in feed kills thousands of Saudi camels

September 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

RIYADH–Contaminated feed is suspected of killing more than
5,000 of Saudi Arabia’s 862,000 domestic camels in less than a month
from mid-August to mid-September 2007, along with hundreds of sheep
and cattle. The deaths have occurred across most of the southern
half of the country, from Mecca to the Yemen border.
Demand for camel meat fell steeply, the Saudi online
newspaper Arab News reported. Driving the decline was concern that
the toxin might be passed from camel to human, amid rumors of camel
breeders selling sick animals for any price they could get.
A probable effect of a decline in Saudi camel slaughter would be an
increase in slaughter of imported cattle, sheep, and goats, but
since camels are usually not slaughtered if they can work, the net
effect on live transport of other species would be slight.
The camel deaths may have caused more political unrest than
economic impact.
“Breeders are venting their anger at government officials,”
Agence France-Presse reported. The daily newspaper Al-Watan quoted
a camel breeder who alleged that “officials of the Agriculture
Ministry have remained with arms folded despite this unprecedented
disaster,” which other media have described as a “national tragedy.”
“Many owners have attributed the deaths to the bran fed to
the animals recently instead of barley, whose price has been
spiraling,” said Agence France-Presse.

Bogus vaccines contribute to human rabies death toll in China

July 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2007:
BEIJING–Counterfeit human post-exposure rabies vaccine has
resurfaced as a factor in the fast-rising human rabies death toll in
China, Chinese media reported in late July 2007. The fake vaccine
reappeared two years after officials believed it had all been
destroyed, following the deaths of two boys who received worthless
“post-exposure” treatment.
Human rabies deaths in China have increased from 163 in 1996
to 3,215 in 2006, with 1,043 in the first five months of 2007. The
rise is roughly parallel to the increasing popularity of dogs as
pets–but the rabies cases are overwhelmingly concentrated in the
southern and coastal areas where dogs are raised for meat. So-called
“meat dogs” are not required to be vaccinated, unlike pet dogs.
For the second consecutive year dogs were massacred amid
spring rabies panics in Qhongqing province. News coverage of the
killing was suppressed, unlike in 2006, when the officially
directed dog purges were much criticized by both official news media
and on public Internet forums.

Pet food scare may bring trade reform to China

June 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:
BEIJING–Furor over the deaths of cats and dogs who were
poisoned by adulterated and mislabeled Chinese-made pet food
ingredients may have protected millions of people as well as animals
worldwide.
Chinese citizens themselves, and their pets, may be the
most numerous beneficiaries of new food safety regulations introduced
by the Beijing government on May 9, 2007.
With 1.5 billion citizens, China is the world’s most
populous nation–and also has more than twice as many pets as any
other nation. Officially, China had more than 150 million pet dogs
as of mid-2005. China is also believed to have from 300 to 450
million pet cats, but the Chinese cat population has never been
formally surveyed.

Reports of a new chemosterilant being used in Chennai were premature

May 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2007:
CHENNAI–Tamil Nadu state health minister K.K.S.S.R.
Ramachandran on April 18, 2007 stirred hope worldwide that Tamil
Nadu Veterinary & Animal Sciences University had developed a new and
better injectable chemosterilant for male dogs.
“Male dogs can be sterilized through injection of cadmium
chloride. This procedure is simpler than birth control surgery,”
Ramachandran told a Chennai workshop on rabies prevention and stray
dog control.
Ramachandran indicated that cadmium chloride injections would
soon be field-tested in Chennai by the local Animal Birth Control
programs. His remarks were amplified that evening by Sanjay Pinto of
NDTV, and by The Hindu, a Chennai-based nationally circulated
newspaper, the next morning.

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