Category: Medicine

Good deeds

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Veterinarians Jeff Young and
Mark Chamberlain of Planned
Pethood Plus held their third annual
male cat neuter-a-thon in Boulder,
Colorado, on January 30––and donated
their $7 per cat fee to Mission Wolf, a
refuge for wolves and wolf hybrids in
Silver Cliff, Colorado.
Tucson veterinarians Reuben
Merideth and Barbara Page in early
January donated a $1,400 cataract
removal operation to give partial sight to
a bighorn lamb, who was apparently
abandoned by her mother after going
blind but was rescued by hikers who
turned her over to the Arizona Game
and Fish Department. The lamb will
probably be donated to a zoo or a cap-
tive breeding program.

ANIMAL HEALTH

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Rabies update
New Hampshire state veterinarian
Clifford McGinniss warned January
15––after a rabid kitten was found in a
Merrimack College dormitory––that feral cats
must be exterminated to protect Hampton
Beach visitors. Disagreeing, Hampton Beach
is pursung a $24,000 cat control plan combin-
ing catch-and-kill with selective neuter/
release. The plan is also opposed by New
Hampshire SPCA executive director Bonnie
Roberts, who told the Boston Globe that the
feral cats “are going to tangle with rabid ani-
mals and spread the disease.” In fact, rabies
vaccination is a prerequisite of the Hampton
Beach plan, and of all properly managed
neuter/release programs. There are no reports
on record of any cat in any recognized
neuter/release program anywhere ever con-
tracting rabies, while several neuter/release
programs including one coordinated in 1991-
1992 by ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim
Bartlett have been credited by public safety
officials with creating an immunized barrier
between rabid wildlife and family pets.

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Editorial: Wanted: vets on wheels at combat pay

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Just over two years ago ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim Bartlett disregarded
warnings that she was taking her life in her hands and took an experimental neuter/release
project into inner city Bridgeport, Connecticut––the city with the highest per capita murder
rate and greatest rate of drug-related violence of any in North America. Among the burned-
out, abandoned shells of factories and tenements where families lived six or eight people to
a room on welfare, Kim found a community who for the most part already knew about pet
overpopulation, were worried about the homeless animals they fed at their doorsteps, and
were readily receptive to her help in obtaining neutering and vaccination. Bridgeport had
and probably still has a high density of feral cats not primarily because anyone was ignorant
or indifferent, nor because even the poorest of the poor were unwilling to pay for neutering
their pets––albeit that most couldn’t afford to pay anything close to the going veterinary
rates. On the contrary, Kim was welcomed as “the cat lady” where even police feared to
walk. Children ran up and down the shabby side streets knocking on doors, asking neigh-
bors to bring out their animals. Elderly women without even a warm coat and third genera-
tion welfare mothers produced tattered and painstakingly preserved ten-dollar bills to make
the most generous contribution they could to assist the effort. The nun whose tiny convent
school was among the last outposts of hope in the inner city gave Kim her full support.

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Zoos

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
announced December 20 that it has indefi-
nitely ended consideration of requests to
import giant pandas. The verdict came six
months after Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt
vetoed the San Diego Zoo’s attempt to import
two pandas in exchange for a grant of $1 mil-
lion to loosely monitored “panda conservation”
projects in China, which in the past have
included such activities as building a hydro-
electric dam.

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Biomedical research

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Despite a warning from senior radi-
ation biologist Dr. Joseph Hamilton that the
experiments had “a little of the Buchenwald
touch, “ the Atomic Energy Commission con-
ducted extensive radiation research on unwitting
human subjects from the mid-1940s into the
early 1970s, according to newly declassified
documents released in December by Energy
Secretary Hazel O’Leary, who battled her own
bureaucracy for nearly a year to obtain them. In
one experiment, 19 mentally retarded teenaged
boys at a state school in Fernald, Mass-
achusetts, were given radioactive milk with
their breakfast cereal from 1946 until 1956. In

Diet & Health

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Three new health studies rein-
force the arguments for vegetarianism
––especially for men who hope to remain
sexually active after the age of 40. A study
of Hawaiians of Japanese ancestry whose diet
consists mainly of tofu and rice, published in
the November edition of the British medical
journal The Lancet, suggested that tofu may
contain an ingredient that combats prostate
cancer. The study confirmed the findings of
an earlier study of U.S. Seventh Day
Adventists (more than half of whom are ethi-
cal vegetarians), which found that men who
eat a lot of legumes and fruits have a conspic-
uously low death rate from prostate cancer.
Prostate trouble is a leading cause of sexual
impotence––and the January 1994 issue of
The Journal of Urology includes the results of
the largest study of impotence ever. High
cholesterol consumption, heart disease, and
high blood pressure were confirmed as factors
frequently correlating with impotence; all are
closely associated with meat-eating.

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Animal Control & Rescue

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

The value of publicity was
underscored in Cleveland, Ohio,
after county humane officer Tony
Brand rescued a pair of starving dogs
from a rooftop on December 11.
Notice of the rescue in the Cleveland
Plain Dealer brought nearly 100 calls
to the Cuyahoga County Kennel from
would-be adopters, of whom more
than 20 took dogs––five times the
usual adoption rate. Adoptions also
rose at other local shelters.

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Are purebreds really more prone to genetic disease?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Purebred dogs may be increasingly susceptible
to genetic disease due to inbreeding, but one apparent
proof the Humane Society of the U.S. presented in the
September 1993 edition of its Shelter Sense newsletter
was not necessarily any such thing.
A special edition on “Purebreds and pet over-
population,” the issue featured articles by assistant editor
Julia Miller and HSUS vice president for farm animals
and bioethics Michael Fox, who backed the recent HSUS
call for a voluntary moratorium on dog and cat breeding
by linking the pursuit of breed standards to congenital
health problems. Illustrating their articles was a table
compiled by the Canine Genetic Disease Information
System at the University of Pennsylvania entitled
“Number of Genetic Disorders or Genetic Susceptibilities
to Disease Recognized in the Dog 1928-1988.”

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ANIMAL HEALTH

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

The Farm Bureau, Cattleman’s Association, and
Eastern Milk Producers Cooperative are backing a New York
state bill to let farmers vaccinate their own cattle against rabies,
as is allowed in 36 other states including the adjoining states of
Vermont and Pennsylvania. The bill is opposed by the New York
Veterinary Medical Society. The farm groups claim it would help
curb rabies by cutting vaccination costs. The veterinarians
respond that vaccinations improperly done provide no protection.
The tick-borne disease tularemia has reappeared in
southeastern Pennsylvania, a decade after causing two human
fatalities in the same area. The disease usually hits rabbits,
killing them within four hours; both the Pennsylvania victims had
just killed and dressed rabbits. Tularemia can also kill dogs and
cats who have contact with infected rabbits.

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