From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2006:

Leo L. Lieberman, 91, DVM, died on February 15, 2006,
in Swampscott, Massachusetts. A 1935 graduate of the Ohio State
University School of Veterinary Medicine, Lieberman joined the U.S.
Army after graduation, became the youngest lieutentant in the
Veterinary Corps., and served in Europe during World War II.
Leaving the Army as a lieutenant colonel, after 13 years of service,
Lieberman practiced veterinary medicine for more than 30 years in
Waterford, Connecticut. “In the 1940s and 1950s,” recalls Marcia
Hess in The History of Spay/Neuter Surgery, “anesthetics were not
terribly safe, especially for young animals. Surgical instruments
now used to find a tiny uterus did not exist. Vets were mainly men.
They had big hands, and had to find that uterus with their fingers.
Since a uterus is bigger and much easier to find after an estrus, or
after having a litter, the advice of waiting until after the first
estrus or after a litter began and persists.” Lieberman began to
question the conventional wisdom after noting that early-age
sterilizing prevents mammary tumors in dogs, and that the few vets
who did early-age sterilizing had gotten good results for as long as
20 years–including a Dr. Flynn of Chicago, who developed the basic
technique in 1925, but could not convince other vets to try it. “I
did a literature search and found nothing on why the ages were set at
what they were,” Lieberman recalled. He began doing early-age
sterilization in 1970. As then-president of the Connecticut
Veterinary Medical Association, Lieberman set an influential
example. The American SPCA in 1972 became the first major humane
society to endorse early-age sterilization. Lieberman’s 1987 Journal
of the American Veterinary Medical Association article “A case for
neutering pups and kittens at two months of age” turned veterinary
opinion in favor of early-age sterilization by explaining that
guardians of dogs and cats who were spayed or castrated young
reported less aggressive behavior, less obesity, and fewer medical
problems. Lieberman followed up in JAVMA in 1988 and 1991. Research
funded by the Winn Feline Foundation, conducted by Thomas J. Lane,
DVM, of the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of
Florida, Gainesville, in 1991 and 1992 supported Lieberman, as did
a major study of early-age sterilization done by the Massachusetts
SPCA at Angell Memorial Hospital in Boston. In March 1993 Lieberman
faced off in ANIMAL PEOPLE against early-age sterilization critic
Leslie N. John-ston, DVM, of Tulsa, Oklahoma; defended early-age
sterilization before a gallery of critics at the World Veterinary
Congress in Berlin, Germany; and in July 1993 won endorsement of
early-age sterilization from the AVMA. Lieberman in 1993 received
the Alex Lewyt Veterinary Medical Center Award of Achievement for
exceptional innovation, and in 2001 received a Lifetime Achievement
Award from Spay/USA.

Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

Harry Rowsell, 84, died on February 3, 2006. From 1968
to 1992 Rowsell served as founding director of the Canadian Council
of Animal Care, formed to supervise animal welfare in laboratories.
He also served as a member of the Scientists Center for Animal
Welfare board of trustees, 1983-1986. The SCAW Rowsell Award is
named in his honor. A veterinary pathlogist, Rowsell witnessed the
Atlantic Canada seal hunt in 1973, as a member of the Canadian
Ministry of Fisheries’ Seals & Sealing Committee. “It’s a hell of a
thing,” he testified afterward. “Stop telling people to write
letters to Canada and Norway,” Rowsell advised activists. “Tell
them instead to start a worldwide campaign against wearing fur.”
Rowsell “brought many reforms to Canada on animal experimentation,
and on the use of animals in education. He was a great friend of
[Animal Welfare Institute founder] Christine Stevens, and a major
influence on me,” In The Name of Science author Barbara Orlans told
ANIMAL PEOPLE.

Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

Tony Banks, 62, died on January 7, 2006 from a stroke
sufferedon vacation at Sanibel Island, Florida. A Member of
Parlia-ment 1983-2004, sports minister 1997-1999, and named to the
House of Lords in mid-2005, Banks was a vegetarian and “a staunch
animal welfarist who played a key role in having hunting with dogs
banned in Britain,” World Society for the Protection of Animals
director general Peter Davies recalled. “He was also a strong
supporter of my separate charity which erected the Memorial to
Animals in War in Park Lane, London,” Davies said. Added League
Against Cruel Sports chair John Cooper, “In his firm belief that
people have a moral responsibility to animals, Banks was not just a
figurehead for millions of animal welfare supporters across Britain,
but a determined street fighter in the corridors of Westminster.”
At his death Banks was League Against Cruel Sports vice president.

Ethel Thurston, 94, died at home in New York City on
January 4, 2006. A longtime professor at Hunter College, Bryn
Mawr, New York University, and the Manhattan College of Music,
Thurston was globally known as a musicologist who recreated the
original sounds of compositions from the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
But Thurston was legendary, friend Sara Sohn recalled, as “a
pioneer of the animal rights movement, who devoted the last three
decades of her life to running the two organizations she founded.

Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

Angus, 27, believed to be the world’s biggest captive
elephant, was found dead on January 8 by his trainer, Michael
Hackenberger, at the Bowmanville Zoo near Toronto. The star of the
Bowmanville Zoo elephant ride concession for 20 years, Angus died
about 30 hours after a sedative test given in preparation for
retiring him to the Pumba private game reserve near Port Elizabeth,
South Africa. Born in Kruger National Park, Angus was captured at
age two. He toured with the Garden Brothers Circus and briefly
resided at zoos in Quebec and Texas before arriving at Bowmanville
with Hackenberger and his wife, zoo veterinarian Wendy Korver. A
highlight of his life was swimming with beluga whales in the St.
Lawrence River on one occasion while on tour.

Ragtime, 19, a miniature performing horse who was involved
in a landmark 1989 zoning dispute in Thousand Oaks, California,
died on January 2, four days after his trainers, Rich & Patty
Fairchild, moved him and his mate Sassy to Colorado Springs.

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

Tina Nelson, 48, executive director of the American
Anti-Vivisection Society since 1995, died on October 19, 2005,
after fighting cancer for a year and a half. Hired by the Bucks
County SPCA after earning a biology degree from the Delaware Valley
College of Science & Agriculture, Nelson became chief cruelty
investigator, then worked as a domestic relations officer for the
Bucks County court system, program coordinator for the Great Lakes
Regional Office of the Humane Society of the U.S., and founder of
Kind Earth, a cruelty-free products store in Doylestown,
Pennsylvania, which she sold to take on the AAVS leadership. Under
Nelson, AAVS sued the USDA for excluding rats, mice, and birds
from federal Animal Welfare Act protection in 1970 by writing them
out of the definition of “animal” in the enforcement regulations.
This meant that more than 95% of all animals used in U.S.
laboratories have no coverage. In September 2000 the USDA agreed to
protect rats, mice, and birds in an out-of-court settlement. The
USDA then delayed implementing the settlement. In May 2002 former
Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) attached a rider to a USDA
budget bill that made the exclusion of rats, mice, and birds from
the enforcement regulations an actual part of the law.

Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

José, a four-month old blackfooted
ferret who was raised at the Cheyenne Mountain
Zoo and released into the wild near Wolf Creek,
Colorado in late October 2005, was killed by a
coyote or badger just three days later. “We
found only his radio transmitter, and it was all
chewed up,” Bureau of Land Management biologist
Brian Holmes told Dave Philipps of the Colorado
Springs Gazette. Philipps learned that the
survival rate for reintroduced blackfooted
ferrets ranges from one in 10 in Colorado to one
in 30 in New Mexico. Two other ferrets released
at the same time as José are also deceased, but
details of their fate were not disclosed.

Eastern Racer Snake #039, 15, was
killed by a truck during the first week of
November 2005 in Windham County, Vermont.
“Long, black and sinuous, #039 belonged to the
rarest snake species in Vermont, where only
seven other Eastern racers have been found.,”
wrote Candance Page of the Burlington Free Press.
“Herpetologist Jim Andrews captured and tagged
him in 2004 as part of the rediscovery of a
species once thought extinct in Vermont. #039
achieved minor celebrity last month,” Page
added, “when he was returned to his home after a
Herculean effort by humans to save his life after
he was found on July 14 on Interstate 91 with a
broken jaw, badly injured eye and cuts and
bruises. Volunteers fed him through a tube.
State transportation officials used his October 5
release to tout their efforts to improve wildlife
habitat near highways.”

Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

Jan Moor-Jankowski, 81, died on August 27, 2005 in New
York City after a brief illness. Born in Poland, Moor-Jankowski
joined the Polish Army at age 15 to help fight the 1939 Nazi
invasion, then fought in the resistance. “Moor-Jankow-ski’s
underground exploits included impersonating a German officer in an
elaborate scheme to forge travel documents,” recalled Douglas Martin
of The New York Times. “After an explosive bullet burst in his knee,
he was shifted from hospital to hospital, speaking German even under
anesthesia. The last of his 27 escapes from German and Soviet
prisons was into Switzerland. He earned his medical degree there,
partly by writing his thesis on the leg brace he invented for
himself.” As a blood researcher, Martin added, “Moor-Jankowski
experimented on himself, but refused an offer to do medical tests on
American prisoners. He started working with apes,” eventually
developing ethical qualms about that, too. Moor-Jankowski emigrated
to the U.S. in 1963 to found the New York Primate Center at New York
University. In 1965 Moor-Jankowski formed the Laboratory for
Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates, LEMSIP for short,
which for the next 30 years was widely seen as the standard setter in
humane treatment of laboratory primates. “He was dismissed by NYU on
August 9, 1995,” Martin summarized, “the day after the USDA told
the university that he had reported violations” of the Animal Welfare
Act at another of its labs. ANIMAL PEOPLE reported the firing on
page one. Moor-Jankowski ensured before leaving that all of the
LEMSIP primates were retired to the Primarily Primates and Wildlife
Waystation sanctuaries. Moor-Jankowski may be best remembered,
however, for spending $2 million of his own money in a successful
defense against a libel suit brought against him in his capacity as
founding editor of the International Journal of Primatology.

Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

Beatrice “Betty” Eilers, 92, died recently in Mesa,
Arizona. Eilers was for most of her life associated with Animals’
Crusaders, a global advocacy network founded in Spokane in 1950 by
L. Constance M. Barton, with affiliates in New Zealand, Scotland,
and Canada. The network concept failed due to the cost and
difficulty of maintaining communications with pre-Internet
technology, but at least two regional groups descended from Animals’
Crusaders still exist. “Legally blind and handicapped, B.B. Eilers
was still active on behalf of animals,” recalled Lynn Fox, who
transcribed Eilers’ correspondence, including letters published in
several recent editions of ANIMAL PEOPLE.

Elizabeth Blitch, 55, attorney and ex-Catholic school
teacher, recalled by the New Orleans Times-Picayune as “an avid
fundraiser for the Humane Society of Louisiana,” died on July 28,
2005 in New Orleans.

Iris Kay Call, 42, of Pewee Valley, Kentucky, was killed
in an August 1, 2005 housefire after re-entering her blazing home to
find her cat. The cat was also killed.

Read more