BOOKS: Social Creatures: A Human and Animal Studies Reader

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:

Social Creatures:
A Human and Animal Studies Reader
Edited by Clifton P. Flynn
Lantern Books (128 Second Place, Garden Suite, Brooklyn,
NY 11231), 2008. Paperback, 458 pages. $50.00.

A cynic might conclude from Social
Creatures: A Human and Animal Studies Reader,
assembled as a sociology text, that animal
advocacy has either died of old age or is
terminally moribund, that no one involved has
had an original insight or useful idea since
approximately 1998, and that the cause of death
was Latinate writing, also implicated in the
decline and fall of the Roman empire.
Editor Clifton P. Flynn and probably most
of the contributors may regard this anthology as
evidence that animal advocacy has arrived as a
respectable topic of academic study, since it
now has an ossified canon authored by
Ph.D.-holding professors, some of whom long
since became emeritus.

What became of the puppies after cloning client didn’t pay?

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
The bizarre backstory to the reported first-ever commercial
dog cloning, reported in the July/August 2008 edition of ANIMAL
PEOPLE, gained another chapter on September 24, 2008 when Joyce
Bernann McKinney, 58, repeatedly called Friends of Animals
president Priscilla Feral at her home and then spent nearly two hours
on the telephone to ANIMAL PEOPLE.
McKinney sought help in a last-minute effort to win
possession of the five pit bull terrier puppies whom RNL Bio of
Seoul, South Korea claimed in August 2008 to have cloned from the
frozen ear of McKinney’s deceased pet Booger.

Bizarre backstory to South Korean dog cloning

July 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2008:
SEOUL, LONDON–Animal advocates scrambled on August 5, 2008
to more fully identify the background of a woman named Bernann
McKinney, who paid $50,000 to RNL Bio of Seoul, South Korea to
clone her deceased pit bull terrier.
At a press conference in Seoul, held to announce the
cloning, the woman cuddled five pit bull puppies and claimed that
the deceased pit bull had once saved her life when she was attacked
by a much larger dog–but no record of the incident could be found. Read more

2001 anthrax attacks that killed five are traced to animal researcher

July 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2008:
WASHINGTON D.C.–The Federal Bureau of
Investigation on August 7, 2008 released
investigation reports that identify U.S. Army
Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases
anthrax researcher Bruce E. Ivins as the probable
mailer of anthrax-contaminated envelopes that
killed five people and sickened 17 others in
October 2001.
After learning of his impending
indictment for murder, Ivins, 62, on July 29,
2008 took a fatal overdose of Tylenol mixed with
codeine.
John W. Ezzel, who hired Ivins to work
at the Army institute in Fort Detrick, Maryland,
told Scott Shane and Eric Lichtblau of The New
York Times that Ivins had conducted “experiments
in which animals were exposed to anthrax to test
vaccines.”

Meat-eating drives global grain crunch

May 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2008:
LONDON, NEW YORK CITY, WASHINGTON D.C.–History may
remember 2008 as the year that world economic analysts and planners
belatedly recognized that people eat too much meat.
Whether that recognition translates into cultural and
political changes of direction remains to be seen, but by January
2008 the global consequences of excessive meat consumption were
already evident.
“The food price index of the Food & Agriculture Organization
of the United Nations, based on export prices for 60 internationally
traded foodstuffs, climbed 37% last year,” observed Keith Bradsher
of The New York Times. “That was on top of a 14% increase in 2006.

Editorial feature– Culturing meat

May 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2008:

Now among the most talked-about
scientific conferences of 2008, the three-day In
Vitro Meat Symposium was little noticed by anyone
but the handful of participants when convened on
April 9 in the Oslo suburb of Aas.
Home of the Norwegian University of Life
Sciences, best known for associations with the
Nobel Prize, Aas almost every week hosts obscure
and esoteric scientific conferences. Few rate
even a press release. The timing of the In Vitro
Meat Symposium, however, could not have been
better. In Aas, the assembled scientists and a
few investors compared notes on products most
often described as “test tube,” “synthetic,” or
“cultured” meat. Around the world, mass media
reported near-simultaneous civil unrest in
multiple nations resulting from a global grain
shortage.

What is the cost of fraud & theft to animal charities?

May 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2008:
NEW YORK, N.Y.– Data gathered by the Association of
Certified Fraud Examiners and evaluated by four professors of
nonprofit accounting indicates that U.S. charities are losing about
13% of their annual income to fraud and theft– more than twice the
6% rate of loss for all organizations, including government agencies
and for-profit businesses.
The sum stolen, estimated at about $40 billion in 2006, is
roughly equal to the sum of all giving by corporations and private
foundations, Independent Sector president Diana Aviv told Stephanie
Strom of The New York Times.
The amount stolen from animal charities, if proportionate to
total charitable giving, would be about $400 million: three times
the total income of the Humane Society of the U.S., with about half
the amount stolen from animal care organizations and the rest from
organizations chiefly involved in advocating for wildlife and habitat.
Among 58 cases reported to the fraud examiners in a random
survey of charities, the typical thief was a female employee paid
less than $50,000 a year, who had worked for the organization at
least three years. The average amount she stole was less than
$40,000.\

Lab care techs’ stress studied

April 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2008:
CARDIFF–Lab animal care technicians feel job stresses
similar to those of shelter workers, Cardiff University animal
facilities director Keith Davies recently told fellow members of the
United Kingdom Institute of Animal Technology.
Davies interviewed six focus groups of lab techs in 2007,
including a total of 31 techs, to gather perspectives and data,
wrote Andy Coghlan in the March 2008 edition of New Scientist.
Previous studies have been done of the psychology of
researchers, but Davies’ study may have been the first to examine
issues such as sorrow and guilt among lab animal care workers.

Heparin crisis rekindles concern about disease from pig transplants

March 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
DEERFIELD, Ill.; chang-zhau–Concern
about the possibility of pig diseases crossing
into humans through medical procedures using pig
byproducts rose worldwide after the drug maker
Baxter International on February 25, 2008
suspended sales of the blood-thinning product
heparin.
Baxter International, of Deerfield,
Illinois, reportedly distributes more than a
million doses of heparin annually, amounting to
about half of the U.S. supply.

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