draggonlaady

Another advantage of having an animal ID/trace-back program for livestock. Besides food-borne illness and contagious disease controls, it's apparently a good way to get your cattle back after natural disasters...

A vet that'll come to your house, do surgery on your dog, and only charge $100?! Sound too good to be true? Well, that's because it isn't true. There are many reasons that decent, quality care costs money. If you expect quality surgery, expect to pay for it. If someone offers to do low-cost surgical procedures on a folding table in your living room, check with the state board to find out if they're really even a doctor, because that is NOT a good plan on so many levels that I won't even go into it.

I feel sorry for the dogs involved. I have slight sympathy for the owners who are now stuck with much greater bills for cleaning up the mess than they would have had for doing it right in the first place, but only slight--I think they should have been smarter than to fall for this crap. I feel significant rage for the asshat running this scheme.

Apparently, rationality has won out for the dogs that were quarantined after biting a boy who climbed a fence to come into their yard. The dogs are being returned to the owner, and no charges filed.

I may have mentioned this issue several years ago, but here it is again. There's a shocking disparity between regulations for animals and humans treated with radioactive substances.

From personal experience at the University Teaching Hospital, horses treated with Technetium for bone scans are kept in isolated stalls with special disposal of all bedding for 3 - 5 days. Cats treated with Iodine 131 for thyroid disorders are kept in isolation upwards of a week. When I went in for a hyda-scan and was treated with Technetium, not only was I not isolate AT ALL, I was not even given any information on potential radiation dangers (minimal, I know, but still, it's the principle of the thing) before undergoing the procedure, and I was not warned AT ALL about potential radiation exposure to people/pets/babies, nor was I asked if I expected to come into contact with pets or babies. Not a single bloody word of it. So the parts in that article about humans not always following directions? fuck 'em. Humans aren't always GIVEN directions.

Though for amusement value, my co-worker followed me around for a while with a Geiger counter to establish "minimum safe distance".

Now, in reality, what this probably means is that regulations for animals are stricter than actually necessary, but still.

but chances are (given past, similar cases) that it's going to suck more for the dogs and their owner than it will for the kids who were trespassing and, in my view, at fault.

Please note several important things here:
1. The dogs were well contained behind a six foot tall fence, which the kid went to some lengths to climb over. This was not an accidental trespassing, or uncontrolled dogs.
2. There were several people home at the time of the incident (who broke the dogs off, and thus possibly/probably saved the kid much more damage and even his life), but whom the kids did NOT bother to ask permission to go into the yard, or ask them to retrieve their ball.
3. These are not pit bulls. Just throwing this in here in light of the breed ban article from earlier. Start banning every breed associated with incidents like these, and pretty soon the only thing you'll be allowed to keep is Cavalier King Charles Spaniels and Bichons.

for funranium. I'm thinking that any danger posed to humans by a rabbit who drank contaminated water is minimal, but you'd know better--is this actually newsworthy, or just taking up space in the paper?

Radioactive rabbit trapped at Hanford

RICHLAND – A radioactive rabbit was trapped on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, but there is no sign any people were exposed to the animal.

Washington state Health Department workers with the Office of Radiation Protection have been searching for contaminated rabbit droppings. None has been found in areas accessible to the public, regional director Earl Fordham said Thursday.

Officials suspect the rabbit sipped some water left from the recent demolition of a Cold War-era building used in the production of nuclear weapons, the Tri-City Herald reported Friday.

Contaminated animals occasionally are found at the nuclear reservation, but more often they are in the center of Hanford, far from town.

The rabbit trapped at the 300 Area caught the Health Department’s attention because it was close enough to the site’s boundaries to potentially come in contact with people.

As if you guys thought I would ever recommend giving money to PeTA, here's a great example of why practically any other use you put it to would be better. They're offering to pay Lindsay Lohan's rehab bill to the tune of twenty thousand dollars if she spends a year as a vegan. TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!
Think what an actual animal rescue that was actually trying to help actual animals could do with twenty thousand dollars! What a freaking waste of people's time and donations.

that people have this overwhelming urge to call things something they are not?

Current example bothering me is Distemper. Distemper is a particular virus, which affects canids primarily but some other animals (mustelids, raccoons...) are also unlucky enough to be susceptible. It causes respiratory and neurologic signs. This is distemper.

So why do people persist in calling feline panleukopenia "Cat distemper"? It's an entirely unrelated virus which causes intestinal upset and a severe drop in white blood cells (which is, by the way, exactly what "panleukopenia" means--low white blood cells). It is a parvo virus, not a distemper virus, and there's pretty decent evidence that canine parvo virus started as a strain of feline parvo virus. So you'd think, what with it being a disease in existence long before canine parvo, that it would have it's own proper name and the canine disease would be named after it, right? No. Of course not. It gets dubbed "distemper" despite being a totally different disease with different signs and a different viral cause.

And now this shit. I read the title to this article and said "What the hell is equine distemper?" I'm a veterinarian, I should know this shit, right? Well it isn't anything. What they're calling "equine distemper" isn't even VIRUS, let alone a distemper virus! It's a bacterial infection (Streptococcus equi, if you care) that has been a problem for hundreds or thousands of years, and ALREADY HAS A COMMON NAME (Strangles) which has been in use since before either virus or bacteria was identified, so what is the bloody point of dubbing it this other, misleading name? Fuck. Isn't reporting supposed to spread accurate information?

Everybody's fussed about the budget, of course. But what to do? How about entire groups of gov employees voluntarily waiving their cost of living raises for next year?

Government takes action against Montana drug manufacturer
Company is charged with selling unapproved drugs

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced that Toby McAdam and Greta Armstrong, doing business as Risingsun Health and The Center for Complimentary and Alternative Health of Livingston, Montana, have signed a consent decree that prohibits them from manufacturing and selling unapproved new drugs and adulterated or misbranded dietary supplements in violation of the law.

Prior to entry of the consent decree, Risingsun manufactured and distributed a variety of unapproved new drugs under names such as Black Salve, Cancema, and Can-Support. These products included topical salves purported to treat skin cancer, as well as oils and capsules claimed to be therapies for other serious diseases such as breast cancer, asthma, anemia, and epilepsy. These products were ineffective in treating the diseases they claim to treat. Risingsun characterized many of these unapproved new drugs as dietary supplements.

“The FDA will not tolerate unsubstantiated health or disease claims that may mislead customers,” said Deborah M. Autor, director of the Office of Compliance in FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “The FDA is committed to ensuring that consumers do not become victims of false cures."

Under the consent decree, Risingsun agreed to stop making and selling unapproved new drugs and products with unauthorized health claims. Risingsun also agreed to hire an independent expert to review the claims made for future products and to certify that all violative claims have been omitted. The FDA can order Risingsun to stop manufacturing and distributing any product that fails to comply with the consent decree or the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA). The consent decree also provides for damages to be assessed against Risingsun in the event of such violations.

The consent decree was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana today, October 13, 2010, and is subject to court approval.

Consumers should be aware that the products already manufactured and distributed by Risingsun have not been shown to be safe or effective. Individuals should not delay or avoid seeking legitimate medical treatment. Consumers are advised to consult a healthcare professional with any health concerns they have.

Right. So, FDA came in, said "You bastards! You're breaking the law!" and the people signed an agreement to stop breaking the law? What? No fines, no penalties, just shake a piece of paper and say "knock it off, would'ya?" I fail to see how signing a contract to say you'll follow the law serves a point; there's an understood contract that you'll follow the law when you started the damned business! (For that matter, when I got my business license, I DID have to sign something saying I would follow all pertinent laws, so wouldn't this be the second time they've had to do that, and already went ahead and disregarded the first? but maybe Montana is different?)


In related news, check out this site, it's... well, horrifying.
http://whatstheharm.net/naturopathy.html

Scroll down on this one for photo of nastynasty, directly related to the first article, since it was caused by one of the products they sell (though I don't think directly to this woman):
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/eschar.html