Day: May 29, 2002

Meat Eating Causes Famine in Malawi

As we all know by now from reading animal rights literature, famine in the developing world occurs because people in the developed world (i.e. you and I) insist on eating meat which deprives those poor people in foreign lands of enough food to eat. In fact, something like that is going on in the African nation of Malawi as we speak.

Back in July and August 2001, Malawi experienced a a number of problems which led to a shortfall in its staple crop, maize. Agricultural experts and others predicted that Malawi would be about 400,000 tons short of the amount of maize it would need to feed its people.

The government of Malawi said that such claims were nonsense. There was more than enough food to go around and the country could not possibly be anywhere near starvation. In fact there was so much food in Malawi, that last fall the government sold much of its maize reserves to Kenya.

Of course countries that are openly selling grain to other countries don’t attract a lot of attention from aid organizations and donors. Malawi blithely went on its way pretending that it had more than enough food — in fact, some of its leading politicians apparently horded food on the mistaken belief that there would soon be shortages and the price of food would go through the roof.

By January 2002, the effects of the food shortage were beginning to be felt and people in Malawi started dying from hunger-related conditions. In February 2002, despite the fact that it had no shortage of grain whatsoever, Malawi President Bakili Muluzi was forced to finally declare that his country was experiencing a humanitarian disaster and go begging for money and food from the developed world.

Now, Malawi needs about $22 million in aid to avoid widespread starvation, but since it waited so long to do anything about its hunger situation, it has only been able to raise $5 million. Malawi was counting on $47 million from the IMF, but that organization concluded that the government of Malawi was so corrupt that the aid would largely be wasted and denied the African nation’s request for assistance.

Okay, I know what you are thinking. So far this disaster was caused partly by a drought which was exacerbated by wholesale government mismanagement, corruption and delay. But what about the meat eaters? What role did they play?

That I am not sure, but they had to be behind it all. Those animal rights activists wouldn’t lie to us, now would they?

Sources:

Malawi declares famine emergency. Raphael Tenthani, The BBC, February 27, 2002.

Hope fades for Malawi aid. The BBC, May 16, 2002.

Malawi bishops deplore famine chaos. Raphael Tenthani, The BBC, March 31, 2002.

Malawi famine set to continue. Raphael Tenthani, The BBC, May 14, 2002.

Who’s Afraid of CT Scans?

Well, some doctors and other public health officials.

Over the past few years, the cost of computed tomography (CT) scan equipment has fallen dramatically. The price is so low, in fact, that there are now a number of companies which sell CT scan services directly to consumers.

Gina Kolata writes in The New York Times about the controversy over one such company, CAT Scan 2000. For $200-$570, CAT Scan 2000 will perform a CT scan of your body. As Kolata notes, “It [CAT Scan 2000] proudly calls itself the Wal-Mart of scanning.”

This, in turn, is part of a growing trend of marketing medical diagnostic tests to individuals directly. In fact there are a number of referral services on the Internet that, for a fee, will arrange for all sorts of tests that your doctor is unlikely to order (unless you present evidence of having a related condition).

Doctors and public health officials seem to universally despise this democratization of medicine. How dare a patient presume to go out and get a CT scan just because she can? They tend to criticize these sorts of tests as wasting precious health resources — especially since such tests are likely to turn up small abnormalities that are really not health problems but which will cost a lot of money to investigate (Kolata does a nice job of chronicling one doctor’s expensive foray into tests following abnormalities that showed up on a CT scan). Of course, CAT Scan 2000 and others point to people whose scans found cancers and other diseases that would have otherwise went undiagnosed.

As Ronald Bailey notes in an article on private CT scans for Reason, the medical profession has a long history of wanting to keep patients from having direct access to diagnostic tests. As he notes,

The CT scanning dispute is reminiscent of the debate in the 1990s over whether women should have access to the test for the BRCA breast cancer gene. Medical professionals were nearly unanimous that women should not be able to get a BRCA test on the grounds that, if it turned out they had the gene, there was no clinically validated treatment available.

Despite these pronouncements, many women pressed on, obtained the test, and if they found that they were at risk, chose to have mastectomies. Subsequent research has conclusively shown that mastectomies dramatically reduce a BRCA gene carrier’s risk of getting breast cancer. Many women would have died had they waited until they got the gatekeepers’ okay to proceed.

I think CAT Scan 2000 and companies like it are an excellent idea. One company advertised that they would even burn images of the scan onto a CD-ROM for a fee. I’d love to post a scan of my lungs to my web site.

Sources:

Cheaper Body Scans Spread, Despite Doubts Gina Kolata, The New York Times, May 27, 2002.

Scanning for Health?
“Ignorance is bliss,” say some doctors. Ronald Bailey, Reason, May 29, 2002.

PETA Puts Supporter of Violence on Its Payroll

Gary Yourofsky’s absence from the animal rights movement was short lived as the advocate of violence distributed a letter this week indicating that he is now on the payroll of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Yourofsky writes in his letter,

The day after my resignation letter was sent out a couple of months ago, I received a phone call from Ingrid Newkirk, PETA’s founder and president. Ingrid called after Bruce Friedrich, PETA’s Director of Vegan Outreach, informed her of my situation. As most of you recall, after six years of volunteering for ADAPTT, I resigned as ADAPTT’s president due to financial ruin.

Ingrid’s message was touching and emotional, to say the least. Frankly, I was blown away that Ingrid would call me with concern because I could no longer continue my activism. Getting a call and/or a request from Ingrid is like getting a call from the Godfather’s Don Corleone. It’s an offer one can’t refuse.

In a nutshell, Ingrid and PETA wanted to know what they could do to keep me involved. We’ve been in negotiations ever since. Then, on Monday, May 20, PETA made me its official, national lecturer. This union will benefit the animals immensely. Words cannot describe the joy that I am experiencing over this alliance.

Yourofsky’s comparison of Newkirk to the fictional Don Corleone is quite apt. Newkirk says she wishes she could torch labs, hires people who admire serial killers and advocate violence, contributes to legal funds for accused animal rights terrorists, and now has hired on Yourofsky who once said that, “I would unequivocally support” murder in order to further animal rights aims. Oh yeah, that’s a real peace loving, nonviolent bunch of folks right there.

Yourofksy is planning to hit the lecture tour and PETA apparently plans to sell recorded copies of his rantings. Yourofksy writes,

After watching my 68-minute presentation, PETA, like many others in this movement, believed that my vegan/animal liberation lecture was damn persuasive! So, our goal now is to have DAILY lectures set up in schools across the U.S. when the fall semester begins next September. Several people will be helping me achieve this goal. Plus, at the end of June, an oration will be recorded at a Michigan college and placed on VHS, DVD, and CD (audio). These items will be featured in PETA’s next issue of Animal Times which will be available in the PETA catalogue. This will help us reach many educators across the country.

The rest of Yourofsky’s letter is given to defending himself against charges that he’s “sold out,” since he used to blast PETA every chance he got. Yourofksy writes,

By the way, those closest to me know that I have been growing wiser as each year of activism passes. I used to be flat-out vituperative when it came to PETA and other groups who didn’t do things my way. But last year I started to realize that my acrimony was wrong and wasteful. . . .

Moreover, after spending a week here at PETA’s HQ in Norfolk, Virginia, I now see that PETA people work damn hard for the animals. There are 100 Yourofskys working in this building, each activist doing what they do best. Every activist should be required to meet our PETA brethren face-to-face and attend a monthly staff meeting to see all the hard work and achievements. While I may have had tactical differences with PETA, I have had tactical differences with EVERY group and EVERY activist involved in animal liberation, even the ALF!!!! Heck, I don’t even agree with myself sometimes!

For any of you out there who feel that I’ve sold out or something like that — let me paraphrase Paul Watson by saying what makes you think I care what you have to say? Creating an image for one’s self is NOT more important than fighting for animal freedom. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “I work for the animals and the animals alone.” And, thanks to largest animal rights organization in the world and its founder Ingrid Newkirk, I can now continue my work!

Of course. The $10,000 that PETA gave Yourofsky to run anti-fur advertisements in the Detroit-area played no role whatsoever in his sudden change of heart.

Source:

Open Letter. Gary Yourofsky, May 28, 2002.

Are Mice Models of Cancer Fundamentally Unsound?

A common refrain from animal rights activists is that there are fundamental differences between humans and non-human animals that makes cross-species comparisons for medical research purposes pointless. It turns out, for example, that many mice models of cancer may have a fundamental flaw that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to compare them to human cancers.

But contrary to what animal rights activists seem to believe, such discoveries also help advance human understanding of disease and, ironically, do not mean that mouse models of cancer need to be abandoned.

In this case the debate is over telomeres. When human cells are placed in a culture in a laboratory, they will not divide indefinitely. Instead, after about 50 or so cell divisions, the cells will no stop dividing. This point at which cells stop dividing is called the Hayflick Limit.

It turns out that the Hayflick limit is determined by telomeres — these are long stretches of noncoded sequences at the end of DNA. In most cells, every time the cell divides, the length of the telomere sequences declines and the cell will stop dividing once the telomeres are exhausted. Only cells that divide a lot such as skin cells, germ cells and others maintain their telomere lengths intact.

What does this have to do with cancer? In some cases it is believed that mutations in a cell can cause it to keep dividing past the Hayflick Limit which eventually an become malignant growths. Researchers suspect that some cancers associated with aging are caused by this process.

But this is a major problem for mouse models, because mice have telomeres that are about twice as long as human beings. This means that, unlike human beings, mice cells keep dividing throughout the life of the mouse and they do not tend to experience the gradual fraying of the ends of the DNA strand that aged human cells do.

If this is true it means that existing mouse models of cancer are probably not appropriate for studying such cancers. In fact, mice do not tend to suffer from cancers which are associated with aging in humans, such as breast and colon cancer.

This is the point where animal rights activists would say, “aha, told you — there is no point in conducting cancer research in mice.”

But a much better response is to simply not study those particular forms of cancer in mice, or created genetically modified mice or use existing strains of mice that are more like human beings in this respect.

Both solutions are currently being investigated. Carol Greider, professor of molecular biology and genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, collaborated with another researcher to create a mouse that has telomeres that are similar in length to those in human beings. And wouldn’t you know it, such mice contract a range of cancers that is far closer to the human distribution of cancers than the traditional mice used in laboratories. That discovery in and of itself provided nice confirmation that telomeres indeed do play a role in cancers.

As an article in The Scientist summed it up,

DePhino and Greider’s diligence notwithstanding, Harrison says that, in general, researchers need to be more careful with their models. “We’re not looking at the whole mouse genome here; we tend to look at a very limited number of mouse strains, and that’s probably a mistake,” he says. Researchers must instead ask themselves, which kinds of mice are appropriate models for a given type of cancer? It may even be necessary to determine which mice make the best models for given groups of people, he adds.

Mucch genetic diversity has been captured by producing inbred mouse strains from previously unsampled, wild populations. These strains offer the genetic reproducibility that is so valuable in lab mice, but with a wider variety of genotypes and phenotypes. But Harrison stresses that using mice as models for cancer development has already been quite successful. For instance, every chemical that induces cancer in humans does so in mice as well, proving that the use of mice is an effective and powerful research tool. “If you lose the mouse as a tool, just because of some prejudice about telomeres,” he concludes, “you take away a lot of the opportunity for advancement.”

Source:

Telomeres as the key to cancer: could hundreds of mouse models be wrong? Jeffrey M. Perkel, The Scientist 16[11]:38, May 27, 2002.