Maneka Gandhi faces showdown with idols of science & religion

June 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2002:

NEW DELHI–“I am again, in a battle for my life!” Indian
minister of state for animal welfare Maneka Gandhi e-mailed to ANIMAL
PEOPLE on May 24.
“We raided the premier AIDs research lab in India last week
and found a chamber of horrors, rescued the animals, and took them
away. We found starving monkeys with no fingers and teeth, bleeding
from their bottoms, with maggots in any food they had. Now Health
Minister C.P. Thakur and many scientists and journalists are
denouncing me all over the place,” Mrs. Gandhi elaborated.

Alternatives to sterilization surgery still delayed

June 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2002:

ATLANTA– “A commercialized alternative to surgical
castration or ovario-hysterectomy for either dogs or cats” may still
be 10 years away, AlcheraBio senior partner Linda Rhodes, DVM,
told the 2002 International Symposium on Nonsurgical Methods for Pet
Population Control, held April 19-21 in Atlanta.
Rhodes’ prediction came as a letdown after the optimism of
many of the same speakers two years earlier.
At the Spay/USA symposium on immunocontraceptives and
chemosterilants, held in July 2000 at Bentley College in Waltham,
Massachusetts, at least two researchers hoped that their products
could clear the regulatory hurdles and be on the market by now. In
Atlanta, however, neither those researchers nor any others ventured
even a hypothetical timetable for bringing any contraceptive or
sterilant drug or antigen for animals into commercial production.

Next of Kin

June 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2002:

Next of Kin: A Compassionate, Interdisciplinary Science Curriculum
(Phase 1- Grades 6-9)
by Rachel Fouts-Carrico,
co-produced by the New England Anti-Vivisection Society
and Friends of Washoe
(order from NEAVS, 333 Washington St., Suite 850, Boston, MA
02108), 2002. $75 plus $8.00 for shipping and handling.

The Next of Kin curriculum introduces many concepts from the
1997 book Next of Kin: What Chimpanzees Have Taught Me about Who We
Are, by Roger Fouts and Stephen Tukel Mills, republished in 1998
with the more successful alternate subtitle Conversations with
Chimpanzees.

Laboratory updates

May 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2002:

University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine
professor Janet K. Yamamoto, who with Niels Pedersen of the
University of California at Davis codiscovered the feline
immunodeficiency virus in 1986, in March 2002 announced that she has
developed an immunization against FIV, and that the USDA has
authorized Fort Dodge Animal Health, of Kansas, to put it into
commercial production. The FIV immunization may be available through
local veterinarians by midsummer, priced at $15-$25. Up to 25% of
all cats may carry FIV in dormant phases. An estimated 5% develop an
active infection. Yamamoto predicted that the vacination method she
used might prove helpful in combatting the human immunodeficiency
virus, as well, whose victims develop AIDS. But Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center immunologist Norman L. Letvin, M.D., told
Boston Globe staff writer Stephen Smith that her approach had already
been tried against HIV, and had failed.

African wildlife seeks new ways of survival

April 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2002:

HARARE, KAMPALA, CAPE TOWN, NAIROBI–Competing for prey
and dens with larger and stronger African lions and hyenas, stealthy
leopards, speedy cheetahs, and faster-breeding jackals. African
wild dogs may never have been very numerous.
Now they are critically endangered over much of their range,
and their range is shrinking, between human development and natural
disasters like the January 17, 2002 eruption of Mount Nyiragongo in
the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Care for bears in China

April 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2002:
BEIJING, HONG KONG, SHANGHAI–China cares about bears.
That was clear from nationwide outrage erupting in February
2002 after a 21-year-old engineering student poured sulfuric acid and
caustic soda over five bears at the Beijing Zoo “to see if bears are
really stupid.”
International Fund for Animal Welfare representative Zhang Li
offered help to the zoo in treating the bears, who repeatedly all
suffered vision loss, mouth injuries, and badly burned paws. Zhang
Li also appealed for a national law on animal welfare. An existing
law protecting wildlife may not apply to zoo animals.

Biologists in “missing lynx” uproar didn’t think they saw a puddy tat

March 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2002:

OLYMPIA, Washington–A two-month national furor about
alleged falsification of evidence by seven field biologists studying
lynx range apparently started because several of the biologists did
not believe a feral domestic cat could survive in the Gifford Pinchot
and Wenatchie National Forests.
Almost any experienced feral cat rescuer could have told them
that feral domestic cats thrive wherever they find small mammals or
birds to hunt and adequate cover, from the equator to inside the
Arctic and Antarctic Circles.

BOOKS: Wild Health

March 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2002:

Wild Health:
How Animals Keep Themselves Well
and What We Can Learn From Them
by Cindy Engel
Houghton Mifflin (215 Park Ave. South, New York, NY 10003), 2002.
288 pages, paperback. $24.00.

Vegetarian activists and antivivisectionists often point out
the incomprehensible extent to which biomedical researchers have
overlooked the influence of diet on human health–and thus have
expended millions of animal lives in search of cures for ailments
which could be avoided by simply avoiding animal flesh and byproducts.
Though diet has received much more medical attention during
the past 30 years than in the preceding several centuries, human
physicians still tend to ignore Hippocrates’ admonition to, “Leave
your drugs in the chemist’s pot if you can heal your patient with
food.”

Chimp Haven or NIH holding facility?

January 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2002:

SAN ANTONIO–A year after a heavily amended version of the
Chimpanzee Health Improvement, Maintenance and Protection Act was
rushed to passage in the final days of the 106th Congress and signed
into law by former U.S. President Bill Clinton almost as he walked
out the White House door, sanctuarians and antivivisectionists
remain deeply divided over just what it means and how to respond.
Almost all concerned are agreed that the CHIMP Act was
critically flawed by amendments allowing the National Institutes of
Health to retain ownership of chimps who are to be “retired” from lab
use, and to permit the NIH to yank them back into research use at
any time, along with any offspring born to them.

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