Month: May 2005

Viva! Says Plant-Based Diet Promotes Better Sex Life, But Nutrition Expert Says Not So Fast

In March, Viva! brought its campaign claiming that a vegetarian diet is key to a vigorous sex life to Scotland. The groups claimed that eating a vegetarian diet can prevent impotence and baldness, but a nutrition researcher suggested the group’s claims should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

Viva! director Juliet Gellatley told the Sunday Herald,

People are much more savvy now than they were 10 years ago. Over that time the medical evidence has become much stronger, not just that vegetarians lead a longer life, which they certainly do, but also that they lead a healthier life.

But Dr. Jane Scott, a professor of public health and nutrition at Glasgow University, told the Sunday Herald that the group was vastly overstating the evidence,

It’s hard to tease out the effect of diet as opposed to the other aspects of a person’s lifestyle. A lot of studies focus on cultures that don’t eat meat, but then they might not drink or smoke either, and this is quite important. . . . [And some conditions are largely genetic] The chances are, if your dad was bald, you will be bald too. As for claims that a vegetarian lifestyle cures impotence, I would be extremely dubious and would like to see some proper evidence.

Come on, proper evidence? How would that advance the vegetarian snake oil salesmen?

Source:

Forget Viagra . . . vegetables are key to a longer sex life. Paul Dalgarno, Sunday Herald, April 10, 2005.

Dog Genome Expected to Enhance Cancer Research

In December, the BBC published an interesting article on the role that the decoded dog genome may play in helping to understand and treat cancers in human beings.

Initial work on sequencing the dog genome was finished in the summer of 2004. Human beings and dogs share many of the same cancers, including bone cancer, skin cancer and lymphoma.

Ironically, thousands of years of human-influenced breeding of dogs means it will be relatively easy to discover which genes contribute to cancer in dogs. Because of the way dogs have been breed, there is little genetic variation within purebred dogs and many breeds of dogs began with a very small number of dogs, so they had little genetic variation to begin with.

As geneticist Matthew Breen told the BBC, this means that cancers in dogs are likely “being switched on by very few genes — maybe even just one — which exert a very large effect.”

This provides an excellent example of why animal models are often superior to using human models of a disease. As the BBC notes,

In order to figure out where a cancer-causing gene is located in an animal’s genome, scientists use genetic “markers,” which are sequences that differ slightly between different dogs and have a known location on a chromosome.

When disease-affected animals consistently have a certain marker, and healthy animals do not have it, then there is a good chance that a disease gene is located very close to that marker.

These analyses are difficult to do in humans, because geneticists need to look at DNA samples from many people in an affected family in order to pin down the gene’s location.

Most human families are too small – and have too few generations alive at the same time – for a sufficient number of samples. Dog families, on the other hand, have short generations and many offspring.

Such a technique was used to locate a gene in German shepherds that is responsible for kidney cancer, which also turned out to be a recently identified suspect in kidney cancers in human beings.

Source:

Dog genome boosts cancer research. BBC, December 29, 2004.

Meat, Milk from Cloned Animals Nearly Identical to Non-Cloned Meat, Milk

In a finding that must be a real surprise, the Center for Regenerative Biology at the University of Connecticut has concluded that milk and meat from cloned animals is nearly identical to meat and milk from animals produced the old fashioned way.

Currently the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has asked the food industry not to sell meat or milk from cloned animals until it can analyze the safety considerations.

The University of Connecticut research found that the meat from cloned cows contained higher levels of fat and fatty acids but at levels that were still within accepted ranges by the beef industry.

Analysis of milk from cloned animals had similar findings. Researcher Jerry Yang said the results indicated that the genes of cloned animals function as they do in non-cloned animals. Yang told the BBC,

The production of each milk protein constituent involves the elaborate regulatory function of many proteins and enzymes, and any abnormal gene expression would likely be reflected by imbalances in the constituents of milk.

These findings are consistent with two other studies published in the journal Cloning & Stem Cells in 2004 which also found that milk and meat from cloned animals were nearly identical to that from non-cloned animals.

Still, skeptics abound. Compassion in World farming director Joyce D’Silva told the BBC,

We don’t know what this technology will result in in the future; we know so far that it is unsustainable. Huge numbers of animals die. They are born with deformed lungs, hearts and kidneys which don’t function. They die slow and lingering deaths. Is this the technology that we need or want? I don’t think so.

Well, of course we don’t know what the future will bring, so we should simply ignore any technology that we lack perfect information about. That’s the animal rights way. If you don’t know something, then the last thing you want to do is emerge from ignorance.

Sources:

Produce from cloned cattle ‘safe’. The BBC, April 12, 2005.

Study: Cloned Meat, Milk Nearly the Same. Associated Press, April 11, 2005.

Company Says Sex Selection for Cattle Should Arrive Soon

XY Inc., a Colorado-based biotech company, has developed a technology that allows for sex selection of non-human mammals, including cows, and is in the process of making the technology commercially available.

XY Inc. signed a deal with Canada’s L’Alliance Boviteq that will see Boviteq set up a Canadian laboratory to commercialize sex-selected sperm and embryos from cattle.

Once available commercially, the technique would be of great use to dairy farms who want to increase the odds that a cows will give birth to heifer calves which can be used in milk production.

XY Inc.’s process is 90 percent accurate, but is costly because of the time it takes to sort sperm to get the correct sex. The research laboratory that Boviteq will develop will focus on speeding up the separation time so that the technique is commercially viable.

Source:

Sex selection on horizon for cattle. Capital Press, Chip Power, April 2005.

Study of Raw Food Vegan Adherents Suggests They Have Strong Bones

A small study of 18 raw food vegans found that they had surprisingly high vitamin D levels and relatively strong bones for their body mass.

Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine examined the raw food vegans who ranged in age from 33 to 85. On average, the people in the study had been on a raw food vegan diet for an average of 3.6 years.

Compared to a control group of individuals on a more traditional American diet, the raw food vegans had lower bone mass, but nonetheless showed indicators of strong bones. Lead researcher Dr. Luigi Fontana said,

We think it’s possible these people don’t have increased risk of fracture but that their low bone mass is related to the fact that they are lighter because they take in fewer calories.

The 18 raw food vegans had a BMI that averaged 20.5, compared to the control group which had an average BMI of 25.

The group started out with the hypothesis that, since they do not consume dairy products, the raw food vegan group would have lower levels of Vitamin D than the control group, but in fact it was the control group that had lower average vitamin D levels than the raw food vegans.

Dr. Fontana said of this finding,

These people [raw food vegans] are clever enough to expose themselves to sunlight to increase their concentrations of vitamin D.

Source:

Raw food vegans thin but healthy, study finds. Reuters, March 28, 2005.

Illinois SB 413 – Ban on Force Feeding of Ducks and Geese

SB0413 Engrossed

 		    AN ACT concerning animals.

 		    Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois,
 		represented in the General Assembly:

 		    Section 1. Short title. This Act may be cited as the Force
 		Fed Birds Act.

 		    Section 5. Prohibition; penalties.
 		    (a) In this Section:
 		         (1) A "bird" includes, but is not limited to, a duck
 		    or goose.
 		        (2) "Force feeding a bird" means a process that causes
 		    the bird to consume more food than a typical bird of the
 		    same species would consume voluntarily. Force feeding
 		    methods include, but are not limited to, delivering feed
 		    through a tube or other device inserted into the bird's
 		    esophagus.
 		    (b) A person may not force feed a bird for the purpose of
 		enlarging the bird's liver beyond normal size or hire another
 		person to do so.
 		    (c) A person who knowingly violates this Section is guilty
 		of a petty offense and shall be fined $1,000. Each day that a
 		violation occurs is a separate offense.