BOOKS: Vegetarian Dogs

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

Vegetarian Dogs:
Towards a World
Without Exploitation
by Verona re-Bow
and Jonathan Dune
LiveArt (POB 7056, Halcyon, CA
93421), 1998.
55 pages, spiral binding, $12.00

In India, where one can hardly open
one’s eyes without seeing a street dog, and
where commercial dog food is almost unheard
of, there are indeed plenty of malnourished,
even starving dogs. One wonders, however,
if the malnourishment is not due less to the diet
of street garbage––mostly fruits and vegetables
–– than to parasite infestation and over-competition
for the garbage caused by too many dogs,
too many pigs, and lots of monkeys.

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OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

Joanne Boyle, 42, of Quincy,
California, was killed by an automobile as
she crossed the road on March 21, while
traveling in Nevada. From her late teens and
for 10 years thereafter, Boyle worked for the
late Pegeen Fitzgerald’s Vivisection
Investigation League. On her own, Boyle
promoted cat adoptions. Beginning in the
summer of 1975, Boyle was an enthusiastic
participant in the 18-month campaign which
stopped the American Museum of Natural
History’s cat sex experiments––the first
major victory over vivisection in the modern
history of the animal rights movement.
Boyle created some of the most imaginative
posters and was an active demonstrator. She
was both committed and creative, and a good
friend, missed by all whom she touched.
––Henry Spira

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BOOKS: The Monkey’s Bridge & The Flight of the Iguana

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

The Monkey’s Bridge:
Mysteries of Evolution in Central America
by David Rains Wallace
Sierra Club Books (895 2nd St., San Francisco, CA 94105), 1997.
$25.00, hardcover, 276 pages.

The Flight of the Iguana:
A Sidelong View of Science & Nature
by David Quammen
Touchstone Books (1230 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10020), 1998.
302 pages, paperback, $13.00.

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BOOKS: Gray Whales: Wandering Giants

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

Gray Whales:
Wandering Giants
by Robert H. Busch
Orca Book Publishers (POB 468, Custer,
WA 98240-0468), 1998.
138 pages, paperback, $19.95.

Among the whales most often seen
along the Pacific coast, gray whales until
recently have been much less known than the
acrobatic orcas and humpbacks, and the giant
blue whales, who––though relatively rarely
seen––loom as large in imagination as in life.
Perhaps for that reason there was
little public opposition when gray whales
were downlisted from endangered to threatened
in 1992, and removed completely from
Endangered Species Act protection in 1994.

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BOOKS: Animal Rights: History and Scope of a Radical Social Movement

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

Animal Rights:
History and Scope
of a Radical
Social Movement
by Harold D. Guither
Southern Illinois University Press (POB
3697, Carbondale, IL 62901), 1998.
287 pages, paperback, $25.00.

Harold D. Guither, professor
emeritus of agricultural policy at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
offers in Animal Rights: History and Scope
of a Radical Social Movement the most thorough,
dispassionate, statistically documented
analysis of the animal rights movement
yet published. Though Guither approaches
the topic from an agribusiness perspective, it
would be unfair to characterize him as antianimal
rights. Guither’s philosophical position

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ROUGH STUFF IN CANADA

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

Pat Houde, reputedly the biggest
horse feedlot operator and buyer of horses
for slaughter in Manitoba, was reportedly
charged on March 17 with assault, theft, and
uttering threats against Project Equus
founder Robin Duxbury and Walter Powers,
a freelance photojournalist who apparently
caught most of the incident on video.
Duxbury and Powers were videotaping for a
documentary about the Premarin industry,
they said, and were taking video from the
road of the Houde feedlot at Elm Creek when
Houde used a truck to run them into a ditch,
took the keys from their car, tried to take
Powers’ camera, and hit Duxbury in the head.
Powers called police from a cell phone while
still videotaping. “Both Powers and Duxbury
had to receive minor medical treatment at the
Victoria Hospital in Winnipeg,” said Project
Equus assistant director of cruelty investigations
Anita Vongelsang. “Powers suffered a
few minor cuts to his face, leg, and back.

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Be Kind To Animals Kids

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

The American Humane Association will
name the 1998 “Be Kind To Animals Kids” during
“Be Kind To Animals Week,” May 3-9. ANIMAL
PEOPLE informally nominated two six-year-old
boys in Winlaton, Tyne and Wear, Britain, who in
November 1997 tried unsuccessfully to stop four 12-
year-olds as they blinded a cat with a laser pen, but
were told by police that the crime couldn’t be prosecuted,
as they were too young to testify; Shaun and
Kristina Wilson, of Roosevelt Elementary School
in Cocoa Beach, Florida, who on February 9, 1998
found two female manatees trapped in a storm drain
and called Sea World, whose staff got them out;

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COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

Genetic patents
New York Medical College cellular biologist Stuart A. Newman,
cofounder with biotechnology critic Jeremy Rifkin of the Council for
Responsible Genetics, revealed in the April edition of Nature that on
December 18, 1996 he and Rifkin applied for a patent on three techniques of
mixing human embryonic cells with the embryonic cells of other species to produce
part-human, part-animal “chimeras,” named for beasts of Greek myth
who had lion heads, goat bodies, and snake tails. Explained Newsweek, “The
two activists hope that a patent would give them the legal means to block scientists
from using any of the methods they lay out in the application.” Patent
Office verdicts, N e w s w e e k continued, “can be appealed all the way to the
Supreme Court––a prospect that delights Rifkin and Newman. Bioethicists say
that the ensuing court battles may force the first real legislation on what constitutes
a human,” thereby legally limiting many potential uses of both human and
animal genetic material in research.

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Classroom dissection

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

New curriculums introduced this academic
year exempted first-year medical students from live
pig dissection at the St. Louis University School of
Medicine and made participation in live dog dissection
optional at the University of Colorado School of
M e d i c i n e. The new St. Louis University curriculum
introduces observations of demonstration surgery on
live pigs at the second-year level, and hands-on work
as an option later. About 35 pigs were spared by the
change, pharmacology and physiology chair Thomas
C. Westfall told James Ritchie of the St. Louis PostDispatch.
The University of Colorado policy amendment
allows medical students to opt out of three 10-
week dog laboratories traditionally held each spring.
An Islamic student, Safia Rubaii, in 1993 challenged
mandatory participation as an alleged violation of her
faith, and sued the university Health Sciences Center
when the administration threatened to flunk her. In
1995, recalled Denver Post medical writer Ann
Schrader, “University officials agreed to pay Rubaii
$95,000, and promised to establish a review process to
accommodate future students whose religious beliefs
don’t allow doing experiments on animals.”

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