Rabies victim wasn’t bitten; GIRL NEVER KNEW WHAT HIT HER––DEATH DEMONSTRATES RISK TO RESCUERS

September 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

SARATOGA SPRINGS, New York, and

MAMMOTH LAKES, California––The July 14 death of

an 11-year-old girl from rabies and a series of human deaths

from a rodent-borne hantavirus send a heads-up message to

animal rescuers and health care providers everywhere:

zoonosis, or animal diseases passed to people, can hit any-

one at any time. And the symptoms can go unrecognized.

Kelly Aherndt, an athletic would-be veterinarian,

kept a horse and a coop of pigeons; shared two cats, a col-

lie, and a variety of ducks and chickens with her brother

and two sisters; collected nature magazines; and spent

much of her time in the woods near her home in

Bloomingburg, New York, collecting fossils. Her parents

had warned her repeatedly to avoid raccoons and other

potentially rabid wildlife.

BOOKS: Paws For Thought: A Look at the Conflicts, Questions and Challenges of Animal Euthanasia

July 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

Paws For Thought: A Look at the Conflicts, Questions and Challenges of Animal Euthanasia

by B.J. Ellis. Paw Print Press (7509-I Garners Ferry Rd., Suite 164, Columbia, SC 29209), 1993, 137 pages, softcover $12.95.

Paws For Thought may be more divisive than it is

thought-provoking.

With a cursory introduction to the causes of pet

overpopulation, Ellis arrives at the anticlimactic conclu-

sion that, “Until there is a drastic improvement in the pet

overpopulation problem, a significant part of an animal

control officer’s job will involve destroying healthy ani-

mals. The effect is to put ordinary people under extraordi-

nary stress. They love animals, but have to kill them.

How unfair. How stressful.”

Peggy Larson, DVM and Doctor -of-Law: Committed, compassionate, qualified to castrate or sue

July 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

BURLINGTON, VERMONT––Among the

heroes and heroines of animal protection are ex-vivisectors

turned animal rights advocate, veterinarians who do low-

cost neutering, whistleblowers who challenge the meat

industry, articulate writers and speakers, and attorneys who

secure better humane enforcement.

Tough, skeptical, and able to debate any subject

she addresses, Peggy Larson is all the above and more. Her

37 years of professional research, activism, and advocacy

began with two years of neurophysiologic experiments on

cats at the University of Minnesota in 1956-1957, as one of

the first women to break into an overwhelmingly male-dom-

inated field. This work, she recalls, “was horrible. Succinyl

choline was commonly used at that time, which paralyzes

the cat but does not anesthetize him.”

BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH

July 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

The premise of the hit film Jurassic Park is that

scientists might some day clone dinosaurs from bits of their

DNA, containing their genetic codes, which may be found

in the bellies of blood-sucking insects whose remains are

preserved in amber. Considered far-fetched by many, that

scenario moved closer to reality in June when a team of

California-based researchers reported in Nature that they

had extracted recognizable DNA segments from a weevil

who became caught in tree resin 120 to 135 million years

ago. The resin harrdened into amber, and was eventually

excavated near Jezzine, Lebanon. Paleontologist Jack

Horner of Montana State University topped that June 30,

announcing that his graduate assistant Mary Schweitzer had

discovered apparent blood cells in the deep interior of a

tyrannosaur bone, where the thickness of the bone protected

them from fossilization and decay. Horner’s team is now

trying to extract DNA from the blood cells.

Animal Health & Behavior

July 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

CDC goes to rat-@#$%

The Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention blame an unknown Hantaan virus probably

transmitted by rodents for causing flu-like symptoms that

killed 19 residents of the Four Corners region of New

Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado during May and

June. Most of the victims were Native Americans.

Hantaan viruses are typically transmitted through inhala-

tion, after becoming airborne with evaporated urine.

The transmission route for this as yet unidentified virus

has not been found, and investigators have been thwarted

by the reluctance of Navajo victims’ families, in particu-

lar, to speak either of the dead or of matters involving

their religion and rituals. However, Nevada paleoenvi-

ronmental researcher Peter E. Wigand, who seeks clues

to ecological history in ancient deposits of crystalized rat

urine, may have unwittingly provided a clue to the out-

break last January, before it actually occurred. Wigand

Diet & Health

July 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

Thirty of 90 beef slaughterhouses inspected by

the USDA during last winter’s outbreak of E. coli bacterial

poisoning of hamburger were temporarily closed for clean-

up, Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy announced May 27.

Twelve plants were put in a special enforcement program,

with which they must comply or lose USDA certification.

The last of 143 people who were hospitalized during the E.

coli outbreak, 10-year-old Brianne Kiner, was released as

an outpatient from Children’s Hospital in Seattle on June 29.

Stricken after eating a Jack-in-the-Box hamburger on

January 13, Kiner spent 41 days in a coma and lost her

large intestine. Four children died––three in the Seattle area

and one in San Diego.

Estrogen therapy fills horsemeat slaughterhouses

July 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

BRANDON, Manitoba––Two new reports from

the Canadian Farm Animal Care Trust affirm that the fast-

growing estrogen drug market is driving the equally fast

expanding Canadian horsemeat export trade––as ANIMAL

PEOPLE reported in April, based in part on earlier CAN-

FACT publications.

The Manitoba Animal Rights Coalition is asking

other animal protection groups to join it in an international

campaign to publicize the source of the increasingly popular

“natural” estrogen replacement drug Premarine: PMU, the

urine of catheterized pregnant mares, who are kept standing

in barns from September to April of each year. This is the

peak period for equine estrogen yield, coming in the fourth

through tenth months of the mares’ 11-month gestation

cycle. Draft breeds are preferred because of their placid

nature and greater capacity for producing urine.

WOOFS AND GROWLS

July 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

USDA-licensed Class B animal dealer Noel

Leach of Chase City, Virginia, facing disciplinary action

for 46 alleged violations of the Animal Welfare Act, sued

Friends of Animals on May 24 for purportedly defaming

his character and interfering with his business relation-

ships in connection with bringing many of the alleged vio-

lations to the USDA’s attention. Leach claims FoA under-

cover investigators trespassed on his property while gath-

ering evidence. FoA attorney Herman Kaufman respond-

ed to the suit with a request for dismissal, pointing out

that the action is based on an alleged tort in 1990 for

which the statute of limitations is just two years, and that

the statute of limitations in defamation cases in Virginia,

where the suit was filed, is only one year. Well known to

USDA inspectors, Leach was rapped for six previous

AWA violations in 1983. His primary business is selling

dogs and cats to research labs and dissection supply firms.

VIVISECTION

June 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

Cruelty charges against Dr. Florintino

Sanguinetti, director of the Hospital de Clinicas Jose de

San Martin in Buenos Aires, Argentina, may be dropped

soon because the judge assigned to the case has failed to

schedule a prosecution, according to the Asociacion para la

Defensa de los Derechos del Animal. The case made inter-

national headlines in March 1990 when judge Omar Faciuto

joined ADDA in a visit to the hospital dog laboratory, and

found numerous dogs confined in tiny, poorly ventilated

cages, amid heaps of their own excrement. Faciuto imme-

diately ordered that the dogs be removed and the laboratory

be closed. It was the first time anyone in Argentina had

closed a laboratory via the courts. But that’s where the

action stopped. As of March 17, ADDA urgently requested

that letters be addressed to: Sr. Juez de lra. Instancia

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