Animal Health

January 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

Ebola virus
The World Health Organization
on December 16 declared a two-year drive
to discover how Ebola virus is transmitted
from other primates, who often survive it, to
chimpanzees and humans, in whom it is usually
fatal. An early clue came from Colonel
Nancy Jax of the U.S. Army Medical
Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, in
Frederick, Maryland, who reported in the
December 22 edition of the British medical
journal The Lancet that Ebola is probably
transmitted by airborne droplets, much like
the common cold. Jax observed that two
monkeys kept in cages 10 feet from others
who had Ebola also developed Ebola and
died in 10 and 11 days, respectively, even
though they had no physical contact with the
sick monkeys. “The findings emphasize the
advisability of at-risk personnel employing
precautions to safeguard against ocular, oral,
and nasopharyngeal exposure,” Jax wrote.

NIH: investigate mad cow disease link to human illness

January 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

WASHINGTON D.C., LONDON
––Leading researchers from the National
Institutes of Health and other biomedical
research institutions worldwide are calling for
intensive investigation of a long hypothesized
link between bovine spongiform encephalopathy
(BSE), afflicting 53% of British cattle
herds during the past decade, and CreutzfieldJakob
disease (CJD), a once rare degenerative
condition chiefly afflicting the elderly.
In the past three years CJD has killed
three British cattle farmers in mid-life––and in
1995 killed an 18-year-old part-time cowhand
and a 16-year-old girl who ate cow’s brains in
Cyprus. The boy lived with CJD for nine
months to a year; the girl survived for 14
months. Only four other cases of teenagers
developing CJD had ever been reported––in
France, Canada, Poland, and the U.S. None
of the teen victims to date had known exposure
to cattle with BSE, but the disease has a latency
factor of up to 30 years in humans and at
least six or seven years in bovines.

BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH & TESTING

January 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

The December edition of ANIMAL
PEOPLE had just hit the mail,
reporting that University of Washington
Regional Primate Research Center acting
director Dr. William Morton had declined to
comment on a series of leaked reports about
animal care problems, when Morton and staff
faxed us confirmation of most of the material
––delayed to coincide with official announcements.
As reported, the Washing-ton RPRC
in October agreed to a $20,000 civil penalty
for alleged violations of the Animal Welfare
Act contributing to the accidental deaths of
exposure of five baboons; half will be spent
for facilities improvements and repairs, environmental
enrichment, and employee training.

Laboratory animal shorts

December 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1995:

The European Patent Office on November 24 postponed an expected ruling on a
petition from Compassion in World Farming and 16 other animal welfare and religious groups,
asking it to reverse its 1992 decision that Harvard University and DuPont could be allowed to
patent Oncamouse, a strain of mouse genetically modified to be more vulnerable to human
forms of cancer.
The Food and Drug Administration is reportedly soon to release two reports
indicating that as result of overfeeding and lack of excercise, many laboratory rodents are
in such poor physical condition that toxicity tests involving them could yield seriously misleading
results. One strain of rat has doubled its average weight since 1970, according to
National Center for Toxicological Research scientist William Allaben, who calls them “Just
blobs of fat with legs.” Commenting on the survival rate of experimental control animals,
which at Merck Research Laboratories fell from 58% to 24% over the past 20 years, Merck
veterinary pathologist Kevin Keenan suggests that, “The most toxic substance we’ve tested in
our laboratory is the food.”

Chimp traffic & AIDS rumors

December 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1995:

SUMMERVILLE, S.C. – – An
early-November rumor reaching International
Primate Protection League president Shirley
McGreal indicates that for the first time a
chimpanzee has developed HIV, the human
form of AIDS, 10 years after experimental
infection at the Yerkes Regional Primate
Center in Atlanta. Previously, chimps have
only developed SIV, or simian AIDS.
“The chimp to date is not yet sick,”
McGreal said. “The possible finding at Yerkes
may explain some recent movement of chimps:
lots of possible drug contracts. Most chimps
used for AIDS research in the U.S. are captiveborn,
but we may see foreign drug companies
or nonprofits set up to serve U.S. firms, which
would get them access to chimps barred from
commercial trade byConvention on
International Trade in Endangered Species.”

Marine mammals

December 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1995:

A dead humpback whale discovered off
San Francisco on November 3 and two more
found floating near the Farallon Islands o n
November 9 brought an early halt to the controversial
Scripps Institution of Oceanography experiment
in using low-frequency sound to measure ocean
temperature and, thereby, global warming. The
$35 million Accoustic Tomography of Ocean
Climate experiment wasn’t to begin until November
8, amid precautions to monitor the effect on marine
life including transmitter-equipped elephant seals, a
sonar assessment of krill movements, and four
whale-spotters in aircraft. However, the Scripps
team turned on the ATOC sonic equipment 13 times
in preliminary tests between October 28 and
November 4, violating the protocol reached earlier
with wildlife protection groups who sued to stop the
project, arguing that the sound waves would deafen
whales and seals. At deadline the National Marine
Fisheries Service was still trying to determine
whether ATOC had anything to do with the whale
deaths, which could also have been caused by a
toxic algal bloom reported circa Halloween by
recreational divers. Alarmed by the whale deaths,

Wildlife & people

December 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1995:

Waterfowl
Migrating ducks overloaded airport radar
s y s t e m s across the midwest on November 2. “It was
one of the most compressed migrations we’ve seen in
the past 25 years,” Ducks Unlimited chief biologist Jeff
Nelson told Ken Miller of the Gannett News Service.
“It was more than I’ve ever seen.” Explained Federal
Aviation Administration spokesperson Sandra
Campbell, “The primary radar system in Omaha picked
up so many targets, 29,000 to 39,000, that it shut itself
down. Ten minutes later, the same thing happened in
Des Moines. Three hours later, it occurred at Kansas
City.” This year’s total waterfowl migration is estimated
at 80 million, up from 56 million in 1990.

BOOKS: Tracking the vanishing frogs

November 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

Tracking the vanishing frogs
by Kathryn Phillips
Penguin Books USA Inc. (375 Hudson
St., New York, NY 10014), 1994. 244
pages, paperback. $11.95.

Stanford University, of Palo Alto,
California, in late September gave up hope
of completing on schedule a new graduate
student housing complex near Lake
Lagunita, a usually dry mudflat where football
rallies were held almost every fall from
1897 to 1992. The student spirit committee
moved the rallies when someone found
California tiger salamanders, supposedly
extirpated from the region, trekking to the
remnants of the lake across a busy highway.
Stanford has now rescheduled construction
to avoid building the parking lot during the
three-month salamander migration season.

ELEPHANTS

November 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

The Smithsonian Institution
and Malaysian National Parks and
Wildlife Protection Department o n
October 5 began an attempt to track rogue
elephants by satellite. The idea is to head
the rogues––believed to be just a few individuals
among a wild herd of about
2,000––away from potentially lethal conflicts
with farmers and villagers. The
Smithsonian has used the same technology
to track mountain goats in India and Tibet,
and turtles in the Philippines. The transmitter/collar
each elephant must be made
to wear costs $6,000, project coordinator
Michael Stuwe said, and the annual cost
of tracking could be as high as $10,000
per elephant.

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