Day: December 23, 2005

New Jersey Activists Arrested for Interfering with Bear Hunt and Making Terroristic Threats

As New Jersey’s bear hunt finally got underway after two years of controversy and efforts by animal rights activists to stop it permanently, four animal rights activists were charged with interfering with the hunt and one was additionally charged with making terroristic threats (and a bizarre threat at that).

Two members of the New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance — Angela Metler, 49 and Theresa Fritzges, 57 — were arrested on disorderly persons charges. Metler is the director of the NJARA, and Fritzges is the organization’s legislative coordinator. Both have played a key role in past efforts to prevent a bear hunt from going forward.

Arrested with them were Janet Piszar, 52, who was also charged with disorderly conduct, and Albert Kazemian, 49, who was charged with disorderly conduct and with making terroristic threats.

According to his arrest record, Kazemian allegedly told hunters and a state park officer,

I’ll get my Arab friends and hunt you down; see how you like it

Making a terroristic threat is a third-degree offense in New Jersey. Obstructing legal hunting is a misdemeanor punishable by fines from $100 to $500.

All four arrested activists are members of the Bear Education and Resource Group.

Almost 300 bears black beras were killed in the six-day hunting season that extended from Dec. 5 through Dec. 10. It was only the second bear hunt in 35 years in New Jersey (a similar hunt in 2003 claimed 328 bears).

Source:

Four arrested, 216 bears taken, in N.J. hunt. Douglas Crouse, The Daily Record, December 11, 2005.

N.J. Hunters Killed At Least 297 Bears During Hunt. Associated Press, December 11, 2005.

NYT Interview with Michael Rose

The New York Times’ Claudia Dreifus recently interviewed longevity researcher Michael Rose. In the 1970s Rose managed to extend the average lifespan of fruit flies by forcing them to breed at relatively old ages, thereby providing a selection event for longer life (since only older fruit flies would be able to reproduce in this experiment).

In response to a question from Dreifus, Rose explains why longevity research should embrace an evolutionary biology perspective,

Because the common assumption is that young bodies work and then they fall apart during aging. Young bodies only work because natural selection makes them healthy enough to survive and breed.

As adults get older, natural selection stops caring about them, so we lose its benefits and our health. If you don’t understand this, aging research is an unending riddle that goes around in circles.

The problem, of course, is that fruit flies live very short lives, and extending lifespan this way with other animals is not quite so easy (Rose notes that the increasing age at which women give birth in the West could eventually have the same effect, but that it would take centuries to see any significant effect).

Because of his evolutionary perspective on longevity, it was not surprising to read that Rose believes there is no high end limit on how far human longevity can be extended, but I was surprised to see that Rose expects significant life extension technologies in a relatively short time period,

There’s not going to be one magic bullet where you take one pill or manipulate one gene and get to live to 500. But you could take a first step, and then another so that in 50 years’ time, people take 50 or 60 pills and they live to be 200.

Leaving aside F.D.A. approval, it looks like we are about 5 to 10 years away from therapies that would add years to our present life span. For now, pharmaceuticals will be the primary anti-aging therapy.

After another 10 years or so, the implantation of cultured tissues will become common — especially skin and connective tissues. Reconstructive surgery is certain to become more effective than it is today.

Eventually, we will be able to culture replacement organs from our own cells and repair damage using nanotech machines. All of this will increase life span.

I’d also like the “play cornerback like Deion Sanders” nanomachines, but that’s just me.

Source:

Live Longer With Evolution? Evidence May Lie in Fruit Flies. Claudia Dreifus, New York times, December 6, 2005.

Animal Experiments in UK Up Slightly, But Still Far Below Highest Levels

The UK’s Home Office released a report earlier this month noting a slight increase of 2.3 percent in the total number of animals experiments country. But at just 2.85 million laboratory procedures involving animals, the number of procedures requiring animals in 2004 was almost half of what it was in the mid-1970s indicating the success of the effort to replace, reduce and refine the use of animals in medical research.

Research involving genetically modified animals continued to increase. Thirty-two percent of all animal experiments in the UK in 2004 involved genetically modified animals compared to 27 percent in 2003.

The number of research involving non-human primates, however, declined significantly, with only 4,208 experiments involving such animals in 2004 — a 12 percent decline from 2003.

There were a total of 2.78 million laboratory animals used in research in the UK in 2004, a 2.1 percent increase over 2003.

Source:

GM animal tests continue to rise. Paul Rincon, BBC, December 8, 2005.

Belgian Rail Company Refuses Animal Rights Anti-Foie Gras Ads

Belgian railways company NMBS recently refused to allow Belgium’s Global Action in the Interest of Animals to take out these anti-foie gras ads,

An NMBS spokesman said that the railway refuses all political advertisements regardless of viewpoint.

On the one hand, this is a very clever ad. On the other hand, I’m not sure it would persuade many people one way or the other since it is a bit too clever — it leaves the viewer thinking “that’s a very clever ad” not “I wonder if foie gras is cruel?”

And Duval Guillaume, the agency that came up with the ad, certainly has an odd intent for it. According to Duval Guillaume’s Matthias Dubois,

Foie gras – or “fatty liver” – is still a very popular Christmas and year end dinner dish in Belgium. Because most people donÂ’t know itÂ’s made from the grotesquely enlarged livers of ducks and geese, the result of force-feeding.

I am extremely skeptical of that claim. I suspect most people who eat foie gras understand exactly what it is.

Sources:

Refused anti-Foie gras ads — too shockings ays railway company. Adland, December 12, 2005.

Interview: Inside the Foie Gras. The Spunker, December 2005.