Category: Science

USDA can’t close dirty meatpackers, court rules

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2001:

NEW ORLEANS, La.– A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on December 6, 2001 affirmed a series of late 1999 and early 2000 rulings by U.S. District Judge Joe Fish of Dallas which held that the USDA has no authority to close meatpacking plants in response to detecting salmonella bacteria on carcasses.

The appellate court agreed with Fish that salmonella cannot be considered an adulterating substance in meat because it is killed if meat is fully cooked at the normal recommended temperatures. Therefore, Fish and the appellate court agreed, the USDA cannot limit salmonella contamination.

The USDA has for the past five years used the presence of salmonella as a warning that other harmful bacteria may be present in meat, under the 1996 Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points inspection protocol, which replaced old-style “poke and sniff” inspection with a scientific standard.

Effectively overturning the use of salmonella as an indicator, the case began in November 1999 when the USDA tried to close the Supreme Beef Processors Inc. meatgrinding plant in Dallas after it flunked three sets of tests for salmonella. Now in bankruptcy, Supreme Beef Processors was a major supplier of hamburger to school lunch programs.

“The case took on a much wider significance with the appeals court decision because the judges also agreed to allow the National Meat Association to intervene,” explained Washington Post staff writer Marc Kaufman. The National Meat Association has fought the salmonella standard ever since it was introduced, and used the Dallas case to challenge the whole USDA inspection system.

“What happened to Supreme Beef could happen to any grinder,” National Meat Association spokesperson Jeremy Russell told Kaufman. “The salmonella was coming in from the slaughterhouses, and there is nothing a grinder could do to remove it.” That could also be phrased: there is no such thing as “clean” processed meat.

Cancer risk

Elio Riboli, chief of the nutrition division of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, in June 2001 hinted at
a similar finding in presenting the preliminary results of an ongoing study of the influence of diet on cancer to the European Conference on Nutrition and Cancer in Lyon, France. Following the diets and cancer histories of 406,323 Euro-peans since 1993, the Riboli study indicates that eating preserved meat products may increase the risk
of bowel cancer by 50%.

Further studies will be necessary, however, to attribute specific risk to particular products such as hamburger, hot dogs,
salami, bacon, and cured ham. The International Agency for Research on Cancer is a division of the World Health Organization.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta estimates that Americans suffer 76 million food-borne illnesses per year, resulting in 323,914 hospitalizations and 5,194 deaths. Most of the hospitalizations and deaths occur among the oldest and youngest victims, pregnant women, and people whose immune systems are already weakened by disease or treatments such as chemotherapy.

By comparison, the terrorist attacks of September 11 killed 3,187 people at all sites combined.

The most common food-borne illnesses are caused by the campylobacter and salmonella bacteria. They are transmitted mainly via poultry products–and, because of the heavy prophylactic use of antibiotics on factory-style chicken farms, antibiotic-resistant strains of campylobacter and salmonella are afflicting humans with increasing frequency. Salmonella already kills about 550 Americans per year. As the antibiotic-resistant strains spread, the toll is
expected to rise.

Study suppressed

Only some of the increase of the past decade in meat contamination cases is attributable to so-called “superbugs,” factory farming, and meat production lines running faster than inspectors can monitor, however. Others involve contaminants and illnesses which previously could not be detected, or were rarely recognized.

Biological hazards have attracted the most attention since the Jack-In-The-Box e-coli bacteria episode of 1993 alerted the public to the vulnerability of children, especially, to mutated forms of bacteria which were once seen as harmless. Chemical contamination, however, could grab back the spotlight if and when the Environmental Protection Agency releases a report in development for nearly 16 years which reportedly shows that trace amounts of dioxin found in animal fat and dairy products can cause cancer in humans, with a risk factor as high as one victim per 1,000 consumers–or even as high as one victim per 100 consumers in the worst-case scenario.

Drafts of the EPA report were circulated for peer review in 1985, 1994, and June 2000.

“Industry officials are lobbying the Bush administration to postpone indefinitely the release of the EPA study until other
agencies, such as the USDA and the Food and Drug Administration, can conduct lengthy studies [of their own],” Washington Post staff writer Eric Planin explained in an April 2001 preview of the findings. “The politically active chemical, livestock, and meatpacking industries contributed $1.2 million to the George W. Bush presidential election campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics,” Planin added.

Editorial: Dealing with denial

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2001:

 

States of Denial: knowing about atrocities and suffering, by London School of Economics and Political Science sociology professor Stanley Cohen, mentions animals only twice in 344
pages–but one of those mentions points out the most fundamental issue in animal protection: persuadiing people to care, first of all, that suffering occurs, and then convincing them to do something about it.

“Each new moral demand makes coping harder,” Cohen writes on page 289. “Yet another filter or priority must be set up,” because no one person can respond to every atrocity and every suffering being, no matter how altruistic that person tries to be. “I have tested this,” Cohen admits, “by looking at my own reactions to animal rights issues. I know that the treatment of animals in cruel experiments and factory farming is difficult to defend. I can even see the case for becoming a vegetarian. But in the end, much like people throwing away Amnesty International leaflets, my filters go into automatic drive: this is not my
responsibility, there are worse problems; there are plenty of other people looking after this. What do you mean, I’m in denial every time I eat a hamburger?”

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Pet food and Procter & Gamble

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2001:

LONDON, CINCINNATI–Lon-don Daily Express health editor Lucy Johnston and the British activist group Uncaged Campaigns threw an apparent World Day for Laboratory Animals heavyweight haymaker at the pet food maker Iams on May 27, along with the Iams subsidiary brand Eukanuba, and their parent firm, Procter & Gamble–but as jarring as it appeared to be, the targets had already stepped away from the impact.

“Pet lovers will be stunned,” John-ston wrote, “by an investigation that reveals a sponsor of the Crufts Dog Show carried out horrific experiments on animals. The Sunday Express has uncovered damning evidence of gruesome tests performed on dogs and cats during the development” of Iams pet foods, mostly six to 12 years ago.

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Animal care & control

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2001:

The San Francisco SPCA on June 1 announced a 22-position, 10% staff cut and termination of the contract it has held for about one year to provide night veterinary care at the San Francisco Animal Care and Control shelter, both effective on July 1 as part of a 15% budget cut. The budget cut was reportedly the first for the SF/SPCA in more than 20 years. Critics of SF/SPCA president Ed Sayres noted that the cuts closely followed recommendations issued by former SF/SPCA operations director Nathan Winograd in an October 27 memo to SF/SPCA vice president Daniel Crain.

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Testing common gases

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2001:

 

WASHINGTON D.C.–American Petroleum Institute chief
toxicologist Lorraine Twerdok doesn’t like to do animal testing, she
told ANIMAL PEOPLE on April 12. Twerdok said the Petroleum HPV
Testing Group headed by the American Petroleum Institute would do
animal testing to the extent required to satisfy concerns about
public health and safety, but stipulated that using animals was
never their first choice of methods if another approach could be used.

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India bans dissection

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2001:

NEW DELHI–“I have finally had dissections banned in schools
in India,” Indian minister of state for social justice and
empowerment Maneka Gandhi e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE on May 1, 2001.
“Three years ago I went to court and made dissection optional. This
month I have had the ban put into effect. This is what can be done
if one is mad enough.”

Animal Liberation author Peter Singer stirs the pot with essay on bestiality

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2001:

AUGUSTA, Maine.; PITTSBURGH, Pa.; PRINCETON, N.J.; SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.–Philosopher Peter Singer, always provocative, did it again on March 12 with an essay for the online magazine <www.nerve.com> entitled “Heavy Petting.” Asking why people think what they think and take the positions they do on human/animal sexual relations, Singer at e-mail speed sparked perhaps as much quick uproar as he did when the first reviews of his 1974 book Animal Liberation appeared.

Then too, Singer was accused of trying to upset the natural order.Now chairing the Princeton Univer-sity Center for Human Values, Singer cofounded the Australian advocacy group Animal Liberation, and succeeded Henry Spira, who died in September 1998, as president of Animal Rights International. Singer’s main career, however, is making people think about many of the hottest topics in public discourse: euthanasia, for example, and whether or not society should try to save newborns with birth defects so severe that they seem to have little chance of enjoying their existence. Though Singer himself is Jewish, and most of his family died in the Nazi holocaust, he is frequently picketed as an alleged advocate of eugenics and worse.

Though he gives generously to anti-hunger projects, especially Oxfam, he is often accused of being anti-human.
Comparably paradoxical denunciations of “Heavy Petting” flew thick and fast. “Once an Ivy League professor is known to be a proponent of infanticide, perhaps nothing he says or writes should raise eyebrows,” began Kathryn Jean Lopez, the associate editor of National Review.

Her real target, however, appeared to be Princeton president Harold Shapiro, chair of the National Bioethics Advisory
Commission ever since it was formed eight years ago by former U.S. President Bill Clinton. “The commission’s charter expires in October, and its very existence should be reconsidered,” Lopez wrote.

At a glance, Shapiro’s advisory role on biotech would seem to have little to do with Singer’s views on psychology, sociology, and animal welfare. However, while Shapiro ponders the issues raised by transferring genes across species barriers, Singer dared question whether interspecies biological activity associated with genetic transference is inherently more “unnatural” than inserting a glow-in-the-dark gene from a jellyfish into a rhesus macacque, as
was done in January 2001 by Oregon Health Science University staff working at the Oregon Regional Primate Center.

Lopez seemed to be offended by Singer explaining that “a human male who has sex with hens ultimately kills the hen,” yet asking if that is “worse than what egg producers do to their hens all the time.” Lopez did not, however, attempt to form an answer on either side of the question.

Other rips at Singer and “Heavy Petting” were distributed by New Republic contributing editor and George Mason University Law School teacher Peter Berko-witz; syndicated columnist Debra J. Saunders; and Rutgers University animal rights law professor Gary Francione, whose perspective is generally as far left as Lopez is to the right.

Fumed Friends of Animals president Priscilla Feral, “When FoA questioned Singer’s views, he replied, ‘If sexual contact between a human and an animal was not contrary to the desires of either, gave pleasure to both, and caused no harm, present or future, to either, would it be bad? If so, why?’ Obviously, the animal rights movement needs to distance itself from Singer.” Standing close to a lightning rod could be deadly–but Feral did not try to answer the question Singer asked, either.

Tennessee Network for Animals director Don Elroy, who has pursued passage of an anti-bestiality law in a state which now has none, disregarded the conditions built into Singer’s question of Feral; equated all bestiality with imposing the human will upon an animal, although the example Singer gave in his essay of a dog rubbing himself against a human leg would not seem to fit that definition; and concluded that, “While Singer may be thought of as the ‘father of the animal rights movement,’ the views he has expressed are farther from what the movement stands for than most of
the attacks from detractors.”

Singer was prominently defended within the animal rights movement only by PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk. “Heavy Petting,” said Newkirk, is “daring, honest, and does not do what some people read into it, which is condone any violent acts involving an animal, sexual or otherwise.” Singer’s bottom line: “We are animals…great apes. This does not make sex across the species barrier normal, or natural, but it does imply that it ceases to be an offense to our status and
dignity as human beings.”

Current court cases

But Singer wrote with three bizarre criminal cases involving suspected use of animals for sexual gratification in the headlines:

* A San Francisco grand jury on March 27 indicted attorneys Robert Noel, 59, and Marjorie Knoller, 45, who are husband and wife, for involuntary manslaughter and failure to control an animal. Knoller was also indicted for second degee murder. Noel and Knoller were charged in connection with how they allegedly trained two Presa Canario dogs, whom they were keeping for prison lifers Dale Bretches, 44, and Paul Schneider, 38. Bretches and Schneider are
reputed leaders of the white supremacist Aryan Nations gang. On January 26 the dogs broke away from Knoller and killed Diane Whipple, 33. Three days after the attack, Noel and Knoller legally adopted Schneider–who reportedly had a collection of “X-rated” photos of Knoller in his cell. The warrant authorizing the search sought, among other things, “any materials or correspondence describing sexual acts by Noel or Knoller that involve dogs.” Whether any were
found, however, and what bearing they may have on the case, has not been disclosed.

* The indictments came the same day that Phillip Buble, 44, of Parkman, Maine, testified to the Maine legislature’s criminal justice committee in opposition to a bill to create a felony penalty for bestiality. Buble stated that he and his dog, Lady Buble, “live together as a married couple, in the eyes of God.” Phillip Buble’s father, Frank Buble, 71, was on February 27 sentenced to nine months in jail for beating Phillip Buble with a crowbar on September 13, 1999. Frank Buble told police that he was trying to kill his son because he was sick of the son’s behavior. Phillip Buble told the legislative committee that the dog saved him from the attack.
* In Butler County, Pennsylvania, Tammy L. Felbaum, 42, born Tommy Wyda, has been held since February 25 on multiple counts of cruelty to animals allegedly involving both violence and neglect. She was also charged with homicide on March 13. Her sixth husband, James John Felbaum, 40, was on February 25 found dead from a castration that Tammy Felbaum says J.J. Felbaum did himself. Tammy Felbaum is believed to have castrated herself in 1980 in order to force her doctor to consent to her having a surgical change of gender. A previous husband, Tim Charles Barner, 51, is missing and may also have been castrated by Felbaum, police said. Both J.J. Felbaum and Tammy Felbaum had prior arrests for drug-related offenses.

ANIMAL PEOPLE has received documentation since 1992 of only 22 bestiality cases within the U.S., involving 20 perpetrators, who allegedly committed acts with 17 horses, 10 dogs, five cats, four cows, three sheep, and a pig. This makes bestiality the rarest of all animal-related offenses. The most common is mass neglect, with cases on file involving more than 1,000 perpetrators and more than 50,000 animal victims. One nation, South Africa, records more than 80% of all known bestiality cases, with 284 convictions in 1997-2000 alone.

The transgenic dilemma: Body or soul?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2001:

Are you eating pork when you eat a tomato? Would having fish genes qualify a pig as “not pork”? Is a cow with human genes either more or less holy than a cow without?

In the brave new world of biotech, such questions make careers for lawyers and philosophers–and terrify the faithful. Even as biotech makes food more resistant to viruses, bacteria, mold, and fungi, vegans often find that trans-species
hybridization complicates their effort to avoid all traces of animal products and byproducts. Orthodox Jews, Hindus, Jains, and Muslims may even feel that biotech puts their souls at risk.

The appeal of absolute belief tends to be that it establishes easily understood rules of conduct. The more basic the belief, the simpler the rules: Thou Shalt. Thou Shalt Not. One God. Ten Commandments: no more than can be counted on fingers.

But simple rules require simple definitions. And in transgenic and xenographic science, there are none. That makes the traditional Jewish and Islamic prohibitions on consuming pork and the Hindu proscription against eating beef a series of religious, philosophical, and political battlegrounds. The Jain prohibition on ingesting any living being in any form,  always hard to obey because of the dfficulty of seeing small insects, already became impossible for strict literalists with the discovery of microbes, but the injunctions against pork and beef have endured centuries, withstanding translation into every language and transplantation into every human culture–until now.

Now they are confounded by medical and agricultural practices which have become routine in some parts of the world while still unknown in others. Pigs’ heart valves have been implanted in humans for more than 25 years, for instance, and skin grafts from pigs have been used to help burn patients. Until recently, such techniques often took decades to
perfect. But biotech advances seem now to be accelerating to warp speed the research, development, and testing phases of transgenic and xenographic procedures.

When pigs fly

Just over three years ago, in March 1998, 38-year-old James MacDonald, of West Lafayette, Indiana, received the first
transplant into a human of small intestinal submucosa from a pig, as part of a surgical knee reconstruction. In February 2000 the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of pig small intestinal submucosa as a patching material for almost any sort of soft-tissue wound–even eye injuries and some types of stomach ulcer. Now SIS, as it is called, has been used to treat more than 25,000 human patients, and is well on the way toward even more common use.

A similar product made from a matrix of collagens taken from the livers, stomachs, and urinary bladders of pigs has been used to make replacement larynxes, intestines, and other organs for about 30 dogs whose original organs were removed as part of the study, Purdue University Department of Biomedical Engineering senior researcher Stephen Badlylak disclosed on March 22. This product too is believed to be on the fast track to FDA approval and general use.

In 1998, doctors disclosed experimental use of pig livers to keep human liver transplant candidates alive pending receipt of livers from human donors; transfusions of pig blood into humans; transplants of cells from genetically modified pigs to treat human spinal cord and brain injuries; and injections of fetal pig brain cells into the brains of Parkinson’s Disease patients.

Experimental use of fetal pig tissue to treat diabetes began in mid-2000, under direction of Diacrin Inc. researcher Jonathan Dinsmore. If that treatment works, it could improve the quality of life for 1.5 million Americans, plus millions more people abroad. At about the same time in mid-2000, researchers in Japan, Scotland, Virginia, and Wisconsin separately announced the births of cloned pigs, a first step toward mass production of pigs genetically modified to supply replacement organs for people. Reports indicate that any or all of these procedures could soon follow SIS into frequent application.

The market for human use of genetically modified pig parts is believed to be so potentially lucrative that the Hormel and Smithfield pork-packing empires have invested millions of dollars in related research, with partners including the Mayo Clinic, Baxter Healthcare, and ProLinia Inc. The pork barons are hoping to catch up to the Imutran, Infigen, and Geron Bio-Med research empires, whose scientists are believed to be the leaders in research and development.

People who eat pork are not expected to have ethical qualms about accepting transplants from pigs–and that includes most of the population in the most affluent parts of the world. For those who object to pig parts, alternatives may eventually be developed, grown in other species. Researchers, ethicists, and investors tend to believe that anyone who eats meat will readily accept transplants and other products modified through the use of animal genes, as soon
as they are proven safe.

PERV throws curve

Animal welfare concerns are not considered to be much of an impediment to transgenic biotech either–because most of the source genetic material can be taken from animals who were raised to be butchered anyway; because animals raised specifically to provide organs for transplant must be kept in healthier conditions than meat production facilities afford; and because the advent of genetic modification enables researchers to use far fewer animals in each new
product safety test. The effect of procedures or substances on human organs may now be studied by inserting human genes into the bodies of test animals to give their organs human properties.

Conventional wisdom in the biotech field is that genetic research is far more compatible with animal welfare than the search for drugs and surgical treatments. In August 2000, however, concern about the liabilities associated with pig endogenous retroviruses (PERV) caused the Roslin Institute of Scotland and Geron Bio-Med of California to drop out of the race to produce replacement human organ in pigs.

Although PERV does no harm to pigs, and so far does not appear to infect people, British virologist Robin A. Weiss proved in 1997 that cross-species infection can occur via test tube. Since PERV invades cells in much the same manner as HIV, integrating itself into the genetic program of the host, there are scary implications should people ever become vulnerable to a PERV strain.The PERV problem seemed to be solved in December 1999, when Bio-Transplant Inc. researcher Clive Patience announced that his team had bred a genetically modified pig which does not carry PERV.

The London Sunday Times reported in August 2000 that, “The use of pig organs for transplant to humans is poised to win governmental approval.” But the BioTransplant claim has apparently not yet been independently confirmed. And even as Sunday Times reporters Jonathan Leake and Lois Rogers wrote, the British Natural Environment Research Council revealed that Imperial College researchers Michael Tristem and Joanne Martin had found evidence that some pig retroviruses jump species barriers in the wild.

“When viruses jump species, they usually acquire pathogenic properties,” Tristem told London Observer science editor Robin McKie.The Boston-based Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation reinforced the British findings with a warning about PERV in December 2000. In February 2001 the third annual report of the United Kingdom Xenotransplant-ation Interim Regulatory Authority cautioned that due to PERV and unsolved tissue rejection problems, “The likelihood of whole-organ xenotransplantation being available within a worthwhile time frame may recede.”

Commented Interim Regulatory Authority member and heart transplant surgeon John Dark, of Newcastle, “Xenotrans-plantation is the future of transplants–and it always will be.” But even if people never receive replacement organs
cultivated in pigs, surgical use of other pig parts is likely to keep growing.

Hybrid cowboys?
Applications of biotech involving cattle to human health care were relatively slow to emerge. The emphasis of genetic research with cattle has mainly been on producing more lucrative dairy and beef breeds. Ethical discussion remained subdued until October 1998, when Vandana Shiva of the New Delhi-based Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology warned India that the Roslin Institute had applied for a patent on the genetic properties of the vechur cow. The vechur is a rare Indian breed, found mainly in Tamil Nadu and Kerala states.

Shiva urged the Indian government to assert a claim to the genetic properties of all native Indian animals and plants.
Other commentators soon linked the scientific, legal, and economic issues that Shiva raised to ethical concerns involving the treatment of the “Mothers of India.” Especially offensive to many Hindus would be the use of genes
from Indian cattle to make cow slaughter more profitable.

On the far side of the world, Advanced Cell Technology chief executive Michael West, of Boston, was successfully melding human DNA with a cow’s ova to produce a hybrid cell of potential utility in growing organs in cows which will be compatible with human bodies. Concern that the procedure might produce a hybrid fetus or lead to cloning humans was so prominent in news coverage during November 1998 that then-U.S. Presi-dent Bill Clinton sought the advice of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. A hearing was held in Miami, a non-committal report was issued, and the work proceeded.
Unmollified, prominent voices from the Christian right have persistently demanded that the National Bioethics Advisory Commission be dismantled–which would actually diminish public oversight of genetic research.

Low average

Michael West, meanwhile, claimed in April 2000 that while sheep cloned by the Roslin Institute have shown symptoms of premature aging, his cloned cattle seem to be free of the problem. That might make them better candidates than pigs for use in growing replacement organs. But West had produced a calf fetus in only one of 271 attempts. The major anticipated application of biotech to cattle for human medical benefit would be the use of cows as living bioreactors,
who would be genetically modified to secrete human proteins used in drugs.

As this essentially involves only making medicines from milk, a classic Vedic procedure, there is no Hindu resistance to it in concept. Nor is there evident opposition in principle within the U.S. except from opponents of any genetic modification. Neighbors concerned mainly about manure and traffic and only secondarily anxious about biotech have put up the only visible resistance so far to plans by the Dutch pharmaceutical firm Pharming Group N.V. to build $37 million worth of facilities to produce drugs from genetically modified cow’s milk at Craig, Virginia, and at Virginia Tech University.

The Pharming Group project was first announced in early 1999. In August 1999, Agresearch Inc. outlined a similar project that it wanted to start near Wellington, New Zealand, on land leased from the Maori tribe. The Agresearch proposal met heavy resistance. Two members of the Ngati Wairere subtribal council delegation supported Agresearch;
five were opposed.

“It’s a mixing of whakapapa between species which is culturally inappropriate,” explained Agresearch foe Jacqui Amohanga. But the Agresearch project went ahead, under former Roslin Institute researcher David Wells. The goal is to use milk to produce human myelin basic protein, used to treat multiple sclerosis.

Use of actual parts from cattle in human medicine has distantly paralleled the use of pig parts. The first use in the U.S.
of a bovine valve in a human heart, for example, occurred in May 1999, following a procedure previously used in Europe. A valve from a bovine neck was used instead of a pig’s heart valve because a pig’s heart value would have been too large for the patient, a 13-month-old boy who was born with a severe congenital heart defect. He will have to receive the larger valve later, at about age 10.

The biggest subsequent development in cow-to-human xenography, announced on February 22, 2001 by PPL Therapeutics, was a technique for altering so-called stem cells from cow’s skin to produce heart muscle. Commented Donald Bruce, director of the Church of Scotland’s Society, Religion, and Technology Project, “This is an encouraging
breakthrough in the search for replacement cells to treat serious diseases without the need to use human embryos. It is obviously still too early to say that this is the solution we have been looking for, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.”

Tossing tomatoes

Researchers and the medical products industry would mostly prefer that the public continue to believe that pigs are pigs if they look like pigs; cows are cows if they moo and give milk; pig and cattle products are taboo for Jews, Muslims, and Hindus only if ingested as food; and people can otherwise do as they wish with livestock.

Fundamentalists are not so certain. Few fundamentalist leaders, of any religion, have ever fully trusted science. The
scientific method requires questioning certainties of the faith, while the findings of science tend to push the realm of God–the unknown–ever farther from daily human existence. Science shrinks the authority and prestige of priests. Science upsets the social order.

Science means trouble, in short, and when it comes coupled with putting parts or genetic information from one species into another, it also takes the form of an ancient dirty trick: causing thr religious to transgress a taboo unawares. It is said that the Buddha, who ate no meat, died when someone slipped pork into his begging bowl–a story which may least concern Buddhists, many of whom eat pork.

Some of the bloodiest riots in the history of India resulted from rumors that British troops had given Moslem and Hindu recruits weapons greased with lard and beef tallow. As recently as January 23, 1999, alleged Hanuman worshippers burned to death Australian missionary Graham Staines, 58, and his sons, ages 6 and 10, over evidently completely unproven rumors that they had tricked Hindus into eating beef, thereby “forcing” conversion to Christianity.

So what happens when a Jew, Moslem, or Hindu receives a transgenic or xenographic medical treatment? Or eats a genetically modified vegetable? Is such an act sinful? The question may have arisen first in Israel, where surgeons
began implanting pig heart valves in humans about 20 years ago, soon after the procedure was introduced in the U.S. and Britain. It came up again in April 1998, in discussion of a proposed pig-to-human heart transplant which would not have been done in Britain, at the time, because of concern about PERV.

“We as Jews are not supposed to eat the meat of a pig, but there is no reason not to use it to save a human life,” said Shear Yashu Cohen, chief rabbi of Haifa and of the Ariel Institute, a rabbinical training center. Universiti Sains Malaysia theologian Wan Salim Wan Mohd Nor, Ph.D., and associate professor of medicine Mohd Nizam Isa, M.D., likewise argued for tolerance at an April 2000 symposium. “When there is no other option, it should be all right to use pig organs,” Nor said, putting the obligation to protect human life ahead of dietary law.

Added Isa, “We cannot afford to close an eye to technology. To debate the issue in relation to moral, ethical, religious, and economic implications, we must first understand what the technology is all about.” But in June 2000, Muslim genetic engineering opponent Chamnong Buanien, of Thailand, invoked the alleged use of a gene from pigs to keep tomatoes fresh as a hoped-for ultimate weapon against the introduction of genetically modified crops in the
southern provinces of Satun and Songkhla, where most Thai Muslims live.

How sonar kills whales: new theory

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2001:

Washington,  D.C.;  FRIDAY HARBOR,  Washington–Five years of rising controversy over U.S. Navy deployment of low-frequency active sonar moved toward head-on collision when Center for Whale Research founder Ken Balcomb on February 23 published details of his contention that LFA kills whales with harmonic resonance that destroys their inner ears,  while on March 19 the National Marine Fisheries Service served notice in the Federal Register  that it is almost ready to give the Navy a five-year Incidental Take permit which would allow full deployment to proceed.

The Federal Register notice opened a 45-day public comment period,  to close on May 3,  on a proposed rule to govern “Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Navy Operations of Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System Low Frequency Active Sonar,”  called SURTASS-LFA for short.

The Federal Register notice explained that the U.S. Navy wants “a small take exemption under section 101(a)(5)(A) of the Marine Mammal Protection Act,  for the taking of marine mammals incidental to operation of the SURTASS-LFA sonar for a period of time not to exceed five years…There would be a maximum of four SURTASS-LFA sonar systems with a nominal maximum of two systems at sea at any one time.

“The purpose of SURTASS-LFA sonar is to provide the Navy with a reliable and dependable system for long-range detection of quieter, harder-to-find submarines,”  the often highly technical notice continued.  “Low-frequency sound travels in seawater more effectively and for greater distances,”  than the high-frequency sound used by most other sonar.

“The SURTASS-LFA sonar system would meet the Navy’s need for improved detection and tracking of new-generation submarines at a longer range,”  NMFS said.  The idea behind it would be to detect and intercept enemy submarines before they could get close enough to the U.S. to launch nuclear weapons.

“Because of the offshore nature of SURTASS-LFA sonar operations,”  NMFS said,  “the Navy does not believe that there is a potential for SURTASS-LFA sonar to result in marine mammal stranding incidents.”

But NMFS said that “the Navy plans to coordinate with worldwide marine mammal stranding networks and report any correlations between SURTASS-LFA and strandings.”

 

Brainstorms

 

Strandings,  indicated Balcomb,  are relevant to how SURTASS-LFA harms whales only as a source of physical evidence confirming killings which he believes may occur wherever the sonar system is used.  Most of the remains of whales killed by SURTASS-LFA, Balcomb believes,  will not drift ashore.

Details of the SURTASS-LFA system have leaked out to the marine mammal protection community in bits and pieces for more than 10 years.  The scraps of information began to rouse opposition in mid-1996.

“Between August 1988 and July 1994,  the U.S. Navy conducted 22 LFA field exercises,”  Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Joel Reynolds disclosed via MARMAM,  an electronic bulletin for marine mamologists,  in September 1996.  “The Navy states that they were conducted ‘without known adverse impact on marine mammals.’ Other exercises have been conducted since then,”  Reynolds continued, citing times and places.  The Navy has concluded that no ‘takes’ by harassment or otherwise would occur from operation of LFA.  Therefore no permits have been obtained either under the Marine Mammal Protection Act or the Endangered Species Act.  Any comments?”

As previously unexplained observations of apparent relevance to the various LFA tests surfaced from all over the world, opposition to SURTASS-LFA developed.  Freedom of Information Act requests have confirmed that by mid-1997 government agencies were already receiving warnings from their senior scientists that SURTASS-LFA might be a disaster-in-the-making for whales, though no one could quite explain why the whales were harmed.

Responding to the accumulating evidence,  NMFS began requiring the Navy to seek incidental take permits for further tests.

Lawsuits and public protest greeted the Navy when tests were held off Hawaii in early 1998,  and have dogged SURTASS-LFA ever since–especially after NMFS-commissioned whale acoustics expert Darlene Ketten reported in June 2000 that Navy anti-submarine sonar tests off the northern Bahamas on March 15,  2000 may have caused 16 whales of four different species to beach themselves on the islands of Abaco,  Grand Bahamas,  and North Eleuthera during the next 48 hours.

Seven of the whales died,  including four Cuvier beaked whales and a Blainville’s dense beaked whale,  all of whom are considered extremely rare.

“I’m not ready to say the Navy did it,”  Ketten said,  but added that “The coincidence of the timing and the pattern of the stranding with the presence of Navy sonars raises a red flag.”

After the strandings,  the Navy suspended sonar tests which had been scheduled for May 2000 off the New Jersey coast.

Most of the remains of whales allegedly killed by the Bahamian testing decomposed too soon to provide definitive answers, but the Center for Whale Research, begun at Friday Harbor, Washington,  in 1976,  now has a Bahamian headquarters as well,  and founder Ken Balcomb was present when several stranded beaked whales came up nearby.  Balcomb saw fresh blood in their eyes,  inner ears, lungs,  and brain tissue.

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founder Paul Watson amplified attention to the strandings from aboard the Ocean Warrior, which was already in the vicinity en route to campaign against whaling in the Faroe Islands of the North Atlantic.

 

Bodies of evidence

 

Balcomb had already stated opposition to SURTASS-LFA in comments sent to NMFS during November 1999.  He took almost a year to study the Bahamian strandings before formally commenting again.  His February 23 statement came as an open letter to SURTASS-LFA environmental impact surveillance program manager Joseph S. Johnson, amplified via posting to MARMAM.

The Bahamian strandings,  Balcolm said,  “unequivocally demonstrated the lethality of high-powered sonars,  and provided the opportunity to understand how sonar has been inadvertently killing whales in vast expanses of ocean around the world,”  as had been suspected without anyone being able to verifiably explain the cause-and-effect links.

“The killing is largely due to resonance phenomena in the whales’ cranial airspaces that are tearing apart delicate tissues around the brains and ears,”  Balcolm argued.  “This is an entirely separate issue from [the alleged] auditory thresholds and traumas that the Navy has fixated upon.  In my earlier comments,”  Balcolm said,  “I questioned whether there might be a problem with injurious resonance,  but now I have seen the problem and can attest to the fact that there is massive injury to whales caused by sonar.”

In other words,  Balcolm contends now that the sound volume generated by SURTASS-LSA is not the problem,  contrary to most previous discussion,  which has always been confounded by awareness that many other oceanic activities–both natural and human-created–put out more loud sound.

Instead,  according to Balcolm,  the threat to whales results from the regular,  repetitive emission of sounds at a particular frequency and volume which rarely occurs in nature,  and to which whales seem to be extremely sensitive–perhaps in part because some species use modulated low-frequency sound for communication.

The problem might be compared to what happens when an opera singer uses her voice to shatter a crystal glass,  although it occurs in the opposite sound range.

“Resonance,”  Balcolm explained, “can contribute to shear forces that can be quite damaging–wings tear off airplanes,”  as occurred to several experimental aircraft in the early days of jet-powered flight,  “bridges gallop,”  like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge which fell in 1938,   “and buildings collapse,”  as in some long-tremoring but otherwise mild earthquakes,  “due to unanticipated resonance phenomena which can afterward be explained by simple physics and mechanics.

“The scientific and medical literature contains numerous examples,”  Balcolm continued,  “of hemorrhagic injuries and death occurring in humans when they are inadvertently exposed to loud sound,  particularly at their lung airspace resonance frequency. Undoubtedly such damage could also be demonstrated as occurring to whales,  if they could be tested and did not sink to the bottom of the ocean when they die.

In the whales stranded after SURTASS-LFA testing in the Bahamas,  however,  “It is the volume of air in the individual pterygoid sacs and the laryngeal airspace,  not the lungs,  for which resonance should be calculated,”  Balcolm said.

 

Football

 

“Below about 100 meters,”  Balcolm explained,  “virtually all of the air that was in the whales’ lungs at the surface is forced into laryngeal and cranial airspaces.  It has a total volume less than that of a football.  The two largest of the remaining airspaces are bilaterally adjacent to the earbones and the base of the brain. Their diminishing volume at depth is compensated for by retia mirabilia,  a vascular network extending to the middle ear.

“Envision the football-sized airspace further squeezed to the size of a ping-pong ball,”  Balcolm offered,  “with 1,500 pounds per square inch of air pressure [50 times the pressure that keeps a car tire rolling],  now tucked between the ear bulla and the skull on each side of the head,  thinly separated from a bag of blood next to it on the soft side.

“The frequencies of LFA,  and other powerful mid-frequency sonars,  match the cranial airspace resonance frequencies in these whales at the depths where they normally forage,”  Balcolm asserted.

“Now envision rapidly compressing and decompressing the ping-pong ball many times per second,  until ultimately the amplitude is exaggerated by resonance. The result is both astonishing and bloody.  Many whales died due to this sonar resonance,”  both in the Bahamas and in earlier LFA testing off Greece,  Balcolm said. “Unfortunately,   the Greek incident passed into relative obscurity,” because investigators “missed the crucial point of matching resonance in critical airspaces,  and because suitable specimens were not collected for discovering the problem.”

Balcolm necropsied four of the whales who came ashore in the Bahamas.

“All of them evidenced hemorrhage in the acoustic regions of the cranium and mandible and in tissues adjacent to airspaces around the earbones,”  Balcolm reported.

“One fresh specimen evidenced a brain hemorrhage with a direct path to the ear hemorrhage.  This same specimen [also] evidenced lung hemorrhage and laryngeal hemorrhage upon dissection. These hemorrhages are of the type reported in laboratory animals exposed to LFA at lung resonance frequency,  and they strongly corroborate the theoretical explanation of such injuries in these whales.

“I have been told,”  Balcolm added,  “that the Bahamian situation may have been complicated by oceanographic conditions and other factors that could have resulted in a surface sound duct in which most of the acoustic energy was trapped;  but I also documented that the whales stranded over an area 200 kilometers across!

“The Navy cannot reasonably mitigate the problem using visual,  active acoustic,  or passive acoustic monitoring,”  Balcolm concluded,  “nor can the Navy redesign the whales.  At best,  it can only reconsider and perhaps redesign the SURTASS-LFA system.”

Receiving Balcolm’s comments,  SURTASS-LFA environmental impact study chief Joseph A. Johnson told Bremerton Sun reporter Christopher Dunagan that he did not see how resonance could be the problem that Balcolm says it is.

Claimed Johnson,  “The frequency changes and sound levels used in LFA are not great enough to cause injury in whales,  although they may cause behavioral changes,”  and opined that LFA cannot be harming whales because blue whales and humpbacks emit sounds at similar volume and frequency.

“The Navy can throw up all kinds of theoretical reasons why it didn’t happen,”  responded Balcolm,  who was a Navy pilot for eight years before beginning his whale studies in 1976.  “But it happened.  There has to be something wrong with the theory.  I’m trying to get them to look.”

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