Non-surgical sterilization wait goes on with new hopes & many frustrations

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

BRECKENRIDGE, Colorado– The good news about the
long-anticipated arrival of effective, practical, inexpensive
non-surgical birth control for cats and dogs may be that the bad news
is not worse.
One effective and safe chemosterilant for male dogs,
Neutersol, is now available to humane societies at reduced cost. A
similar product for cats is in development.
The early test results are “very favorable,” University of
Missouri at Columbia researcher Min Wang on June 27, 2004 told the
Second International Symposium on Non-surgical Contraceptive Methods
for Pet Population Control, held in Breckenridge, Colorado.
Immunocontraceptives for female dogs and cats are still just
over the horizon.
Breakthroughs anticipated five years ago unfortunately have
not materialized. Research involving porcine zona pellucida (pZP)
may be chasing a mirage, many dog and cat contraceptive developers
now believe.
ZooMontana director Jay Kirkpatrick showed in 1990 that pZP
can be used as a contraceptive in horses.
“Immunization of female mammals with purified glycoproteins
from the outermost layer of oocytes, namely the zona pellucida,
often results in autoimmunity and infertility,” explained Dalhousie
University biology professor Bill Pohajdak. “The three components of
zona pellucida from many species have been cloned and sequenced
Porcine ZP is widely used because of availability.

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India vaccine breakthrough

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2004:

BANGALORE–A new anti-rabies vaccine “developed by the
Indian Institute of Science, which promises to reduce rabies
prevention costs by nearly 75%, has been cleared for commercial use
on pet dogs and other animals by the Drug Controller of India,” T.A.
Johnson of The Times of India reported on May 16.
“Based on a novel hybrid of a DNA recombinant vaccine and
cell culture vaccine, the new vaccine will be produced and marketed
by Indian Immunologicals under the name Dinarab,” Johnson said.
But IIS scientist P. Rangarajan cautioned that although
Dinarab has been successfully tested on monkeys and mice, it has
not yet been approved for trials in humans and “will take a while
before reaching the market.”
Meant to be used mainly as a post-exposure treatment by
public health clinics, Dinarab may alleviate chronic shortages of
post-exposure vaccines in India, associated with lack of reliable
refrigeration plus problems in manufacture and transport.

Did Plum Island lab introduce Lyme & West Nile viruses?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

ORIENT POINT, N.Y.–The 850-acre Plum Island Animal Disease
Center, just off Long Island, operated by the USDA and the
Department of Homeland Security, is nominally the first line of
defense for Americans against zoonotic diseases associated with
agriculture–like the avian flu H5N1.
Now New York City corporate attorney Michael C. Carroll, 31,
argues in a newly published book entitled Lab 257 – The Disturbing
Story of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory, from
William Morrow Inc., that accidents at Plum Island may have
introduced Lyme disease and West Nile fever to the U.S.
“The first outbreak of Lyme disease occurred in Old Lyme,
Connecticut, in 1975,” Carroll pointed out to Newsday staff writer
Bill Bleyer in a pre-publication interview. “Ten miles southwest of
Old Lyme you have Plum Island directly in the flight path of hundreds
of thousands of birds.”
Carroll asserts that Plum Island was at the time breeding
thousands of ticks, which can transmit Lyme disease and were
“impregnated with exotic animal viruses and bacteria.”
According to Carroll, government documents establish that in
1978 holes were found in the roof and air filtration system at the
lab and in the incinerator where infected animal carcasses were
burned. The leaks came to light in 1978 after hoof and mouth disease
escaped from one of the Plum Island buildings, infecting about 200
cattle, sheep, pigs, and horses who were kept outside. All were
killed, lest the disease escape to the mainland.

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Maine lab bootlegged avian flu virus; ex-execs charged

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

BANGOR–The avian flu virus involved was H9N2, not the H5N1
strain now rampaging through Southeast Asia, nor one of the other
deadly H5 or H7 strains.
Still, an avian flu virus smuggling scheme recently exposed
in connection with the multi-count prosecution of three former Maine
Biological Laboratories executives has scared biological security
experts worldwide.
Former MBL chief financial officer Dennis H. Guerrette, 40,
of Brunswick, and former MBL vice president for production Thomas C.
Swieczkowski, 47, of Pittston, pleaded innocent on January 5 to
conspiracy, serving as accessories after the fact to biological
smuggling, and three counts each of mail fraud. Each mail fraud
count carries a penalty of as much as 20 years in prison and a fine
of up to $50,000.
The third ex-MBL executive, Marjorie Evans (whose age was
not stated) was charged with making false statements to investigators
and violating the Virus-Serum-Toxin Act.
Former MBL lab technicians Walter Gogan, 63, and Peggy
Lancaster, 47, in November 2003 pleaded guilty to related charges.
Gogan admitted being an accessory after the fact, which could carry
a sentence of up to 30 months in prison. Lancaster admitted to
ordering staff to falsely label vaccines, carrying a possible
penalty of one year in prison.

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Cat-eaters may get, spread SARS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

GUANGZHOU–Laboratory studies of Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome directed by virologist Albert D.M.E. Osterhaus of the
Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, published in the October 30
edition of the British journal Nature, demonstrate that cats and
ferrets could potentially carry the disease from filthy live markets
to humans.
Osterhaus said his experimental goal was simply to find out
if either cats or ferrets could be used as a laboratory model for
SARS. His findings imply, however, that cats raised for human
consumption may become a SARS vector–especially if the cats are
caged at live markets near whatever as yet unidentified wildlife
species is the primary SARS vector.

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Study confirms: corruption kills wildlife

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

NAIROBI–Corruption kills wild-life, confirms data published
in the November 6, 2003 edition of the British scientific journal
Nature.
The findings were based on a comparison of elephant and rhino
populations with the national “Corruption Perception Indexes”
produced by the watchdog group Transparency International during the
years 1987-1994.
The findings support the arguments of Youth for Conservation,
the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, and the Nairobi office of
the International Fund for Animal Welfare, in their continuing
effort to maintain the 1977 Kenyan national ban on sport hunting.
Yet study authors Robert J. Smith, R.D.J. Muir, M.J.
Walpole, Andrew Balmford and Nigel Leader-Williams paradoxically
concluded with an implied endorsement of “sustainable use,” such as
hunting, to fund conservation. This was probably because the study
made no effort to trace the relationship between legal hunting and
corruption.
Wildlife policy changes proposed in both the U.S. and
Kenya–backed by much of the same money–threaten to replace the
principle of protecting rare species with the notion that even
endangered wildlife should “pay for itself” by being hunted or
captured for sale.

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Wild lions hunted to the verge of extinction

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

LONDON–Wild African lions have been hunted to the brink of
extinction, warn researchers Laurence Frank of the University of
California and David Macdonald of the Oxford University Wildlife
Conserv-ation Research Unit.
Frank, writing in the September 18 edition of New Scientist,
has investigated African lions, hyenas, and other large predators in
Kenya for more than 20 years. Macdonald, editor of the Encyclopedia
of Mammals, directed a recent five-year study of lion conservation
in Zimbabwe and Botswana.
The wild African lion population has fallen from 230,000 to
23,000 in under 20 years, said Frank. Cheetahs have fallen to
15,000 and wild dogs to 5,500 over the same time, but were far fewer
to begin with.
All are in trouble, Frank explained, but lions are declining
the most rapidly, as the most dangerous of the large African
predators and the species most coveted for a trophy.

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SARS spread from live markets, but when?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

BEIJING–Blood tests indicate that about 1% of the children
in 17 provinces of China were exposed to Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome before the outbreaks of 2002-2003 that hit 24 of the 31
provinces.
Evidently passing from animals sold in filthy live markets to
humans working in food preparation, and then spreading from human to
human, SARS eventually killed 916 people in 32 nations, with about
650 of the deaths occurring in mainland China and Hong Kong.
The blood study was conducted by the Beijing Military Zone
Air Force Logistics Sanitation Unit, using samples taken from
healthy children before SARS appeared.
In a parallel study, the Beijing Capitol Pediatrics Research
Institute found that among 77 children hospitalized for various
reasons in 2001, 42% had antibodies to SARS. Among 92 children
hospitalized during the SARS outbreak, 40% had the antibodies–but
none had SARS symptoms.
Both studies indicate that the coronavirus responsible for
SARS was already widely distributed among the human population–at
least among children–well before it turned deadly. The findings may
explain why relatively few children developed the deadly strain of
SARS, but confounds the mystery of how SARS originated, since
children are also less likely than adults to consume wildlife
products.

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Top U.S. & British medical journals report–Hormone drugs from pregnant mare’s urine can cost lives & minds

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

LONDON–Sales of hormone supplements made from pregnant
mare’s urine, already down 65% in less than a year, may fall even
faster after the August 9 publication by the British Medical
Association journal The Lancet of new evidence that taking popular
combinations of estrogen and progestin appears to produce a 66%
greater risk of developing breast cancer within five years, and a
22% greater risk of dying from it.
Taking estrogen alone increased the risk of developing breast
cancer by 30%.
The data came from clinical observation of nearly one million
British women between the ages of 50 and 64, who were surveyed at
annual mammogram appointments beginning in 1996.
The $10 million study was directed by Valerie Beral, M.D.,
of Oxford University, with funding from the British government and
Cancer Research U.K., a private charity.
Beral and team estimated that taking estrogen/progestin
combination drugs could be linked to 15,000 more cases of breast
cancer during the past 10 years than would otherwise have occurred.
Taking estrogen alone could be associated with 5,000 additional cases.

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