RoguePundit

Random Nature #175

Eradication:  Malaria has plagued man for as long as we've existed.  There are four species of protozoans (single-celled animals) which cause the disease, all from genus Plasmodium.  Three were once endemic to the U.S.

It is believed that malaria was introduced into the continental United States by European colonists (P. vivax and P. malariae) and African slaves (P. falciparum) in the 16th and 17th centuries. It became endemic in many areas of the country, paralleling the migration of people, with the exception of northern New England and mountainous and desert areas

Here are some maps that show when and where the U.S. used to have malaria problems. 

It was only in 1949 that malaria was finally eradicated from the U.S., thanks to effective treatment, changes in agriculture, aggressive mosquito-control initiatives, etc.  However, mosquitoes which can spread malaria are still common in many parts of the U.S.  Fortunately, there's nothing to spread unless people--the reservoir for the disease--are infected.  

Vigilance:  We have to remember that unless a disease is wiped off the face of the earth, eradication isn't permanent...it requires maintenance.  The following map shows the outbreaks of malaria in the U.S. from 1957-1994 (couldn't find a newer map).  Each has a letter corresponding to the species of malaria, followed by the two-digit year. 

International travel--mostly by immigrants--is what's been bringing the disease to the U.S.  These infected people give mosquitoes the opportunity to spread the disease...though two of the cases were probably related to transfusions.  We rely upon medical professionals to treat the sick and report the disease so that the authorities can attempt to identify the source and quickly stop the outbreak.  

Speaking of Vigilance:  Here's another disease that's been eradicated from the U.S. but keeps trying to make its way back.  In this case, it's the arrival of the vector that signals potential problems.

The Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC) marked an ominous anniversary July 3 by expanding the preventive cattle fever tick quarantine area in south Texas by 307,000 acres, after the dangerous livestock pests were detected on cattle outside quarantine areas in Starr and Zapata counties. Fever ticks, capable of carrying and transmitting deadly “tick fever” to cattle, have been detected on livestock or wildlife on 139 pastures during the past 12 months.

...

“This is no longer a ‘border war’ against the fever tick,” said Dr. Hillman.  “The fever tick has gained a substantial foothold on Texas soil, and without adequate resources to fight this pest, it will spread.”  The fever tick, which can survive winters from coast to coast and as far north as Washington, D. C., was successfully pushed back into Mexico in 1943.  Periodic tick incursions since then have occurred in Texas, but only one, in the 1970s, eclipsed the current outbreak for the number of premises infested and took six years to eradicate.

The fever ticks can carry Babesia, a genus of protozoan parasites.  There are many species of Babesia that can infect all sorts of vertebrates, including us.  But for now I'll just concentrate on a couple.  Switching links...

The southern cattle tick, Boophilus microplus, and the cattle-fever tick, B. annulatus, transmit the two species of blood parasites, Babesia bovis and B. bigemina, that cause the cattle diseases collectively known as “Texas fever,” “cattle fever,” or “bovine babesiosis.” Texas fever can kill up to 90 percent of yearling and adult cattle. Cattle infected as calves with Babesia normally do not develop debilitating disease but may be less healthy than uninfected animals.

But again, the ticks are vectors, so what are the host species for cattle fever?  The cattle themselves.  

The 1st scenario, explained Dr. Hillman, involves Mexico, where fever ticks and babesia have not been eradicated. Young calves there may be exposed to the babesia, survive the disease and develop immunity, but continue to carry the organism.

"Even if Mexican feeder cattle carry babesia, they will not cause a disease problem unless there is fever tick involvement," said Dr. Hillman, setting the scene for the scenario. "Mexican-origin feeder cattle enter the US under strict USDA fever tick inspection and dipping requirements. To keep them away from fever ticks, the TAHC requires Mexican-imported cattle to have an "M" branded on their hip and prohibits these animals from being maintained in the permanent quarantine zone."

"If fever ticks are moved to sites where Mexican feeder cattle are pastured, the pests may pick up babesia. The babesia infected female tick transmits the disease to the next generation of fever ticks. Only one element then would be missing from the dangerous disease equation: US cattle with no immunity to the babesia," noted Dr. Hillman. "If native US cattle, which are susceptible to babesiosis or 'cattle tick fever,' are infested with babesia-infected fever ticks, then disease transmission to the native cattle will occur. Most likely, this will cause significant death loss of native cattle. It's crucial to keep the fever tick pushed beyond the border, and support and fund surveillance activities in the permanent fever tick quarantine zone." 

So, if we can't eradicate the ticks, we just further limit the places where Mexican cattle can be taken?    

Dr. Hillman said the 2nd scenario involves wildlife as effective alternative hosts and sources for movement of ticks into Texas from Mexico and from the permanent quarantine zone to the free area of Texas. For once, noted Dr. Hillman, the beleaguered feral (wild) hog is not implicated. Fever ticks have not acclimated to swine, goats, sheep, or dogs. On the other hand, elk, white-tailed deer, nilgai, and red deer, serve as effective hosts for fever ticks, but are not affected by babesia.

"Free-ranging cervids do not respect national borders, shallow rivers, low fences, quarantines, or permits for movement," he said. "Wildlife hosts may crisscross the Rio Grande, hauling in fever ticks. Right now, wildlife presents the greatest risk for fever tick movement."

Man is not at risk from cattle fevers.  But there are other species of Babesia that can strike us.  More on that in the future.

Random Nature #174

Decreasingly Affordable:  Not many of us here in the Northwest heat with oil.  Thus, we're somewhat buffered from its rising cost as compared to folks in parts of the Northeast and northern Midwest.  Considering that the price of heating oil has gone up over 75 percent in the last year, the following doesn't make sense...unless next winter will be warmer or homes cooler.

According to the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association, the average cost to heat a home with oil this winter will be $2,593 up from $1,962 last year.

Michael Ferrante, president of the Massachusetts Oilheat Council, offers this.

The average oil customer uses between 900 and 1,100 gallons a year, he said, so at $4.50 a gallon, the average bill would be $4,050 to $4,950.

Yikes.  In New Hampshire, the average is about 800 gallons in a winter.  Some people have the option of converting to cheaper and cleaner natural gas, but there are some up-front costs.

Ana Paula, an inside salesperson at American Insulated Wire Corporation in Rhode Island and a resident of North Providence, is going to convert her oil heating system to gas.

...

"To connect the house to the street mainline I will have to pay $800 to the gas company and then I have to hire a contractor to do the conversion, which is around $8,000," she said. "I am still going through three more contractor companies for different estimates. It's not going to be easy, but we are not going to pay $6 or $7 per gallon this winter."

Paula used to pay $600 for home heating oil each month, she said.

High energy prices do highlight one of the downsides of large homes.

Timbrrr:  About 80 percent of the homes in Maine are heated with fuel oil, the highest percentage in the nation.  Meanwhile, 90 percent of the state is forested, also the highest percentage in the nation.  Little of it is old growth, as only a few remnants in Maine and neighboring New Brunswick have escaped logging--in most cases more than once--since the arrival of Europeans (previous blog here).  That's why most environmentalists up that direction muddy the subject by referring to ancient growth or old forest.

Facing a winter where home heating oil likely will be $4.50 or more per gallon, a task force created by the governor believes the public is ready to start making the switch back to the state’s most plentiful homegrown resource — wood.

The goal is to convert 10 percent of home oil-based heating systems to wood in five years, using pellet or wood chip technology, according to a draft report released by Gov. John Baldacci’s Wood-to-Energy Task Force.

Maine is also studying adding stoves to some state buildings and schools.  Plus, it wants to motivate the use of modern stoves rather than some of the older and/or dirtier ones.  Their use could cause--well, increase--air quality problems.  Fuel oil isn't known for being clean-burning, and some folks there use coal stoves.  However, the risk of the wood burning in a dirtier and less-controlled manner via forest fires is a lot less there than here in the West.

Not everybody likes the wood-to-energy idea. The state’s oil dealers see a loss of business; conservationists worry about the stress more wood burning could put on Maine forests; and pulp and paper manufactures see the price of their wood supply going up with new competition in the market.

Wow, the oil industry and environmentalists agree?

Energy Independence:  In Massachusetts, payment plans are replacing locked-in heating oil prices.  That has some folks trying to plan ahead by shopping for wood now.  Around Salem, there aren't many bargains to be had.

McKechnie's customers are buying firewood and wood pellets, and they're paying more than they used to. Semi-seasoned wood now sells for $328 a cord, up from about $220 last summer.

...

McKechnie said semi-seasoned firewood is already more expensive than fully seasoned firewood was in winter. He's encouraging customers to stock up, because prices could go up more and supplies could disappear. Heating customers are competing for wood against paper mills also worried about getting a good supply at a good price.

Meanwhile, 25 miles southwest of Boston. 

Neil Behrend, 40, of Medway, started his firewood service a few years ago and said that he initially started up to supplement his income. Now, he's had so much business he's currently making six figures and thinking about buying a logging truck.

"Wood is the hottest thing going," he said, "Each year my season has grown to the point where it's almost the entire year."

He said he ships ten cords a week.  Using his current price of $250 a cord, that's $130K a year.  His costs must rather low.  Switching links...

The surge in firewood is also a boon to the wood-burning stove industry. “Orders are up 500 percent through the first 25 weeks of the year,” said Alan Trusler, vice president of home and hearth sales for stove and fireplace maker HNI Corp. Robert Dischner, director of marketing at rival Lennox Hearth Products, reported a 200 percent increase.

Several stove manufacturers are hiring.  Those new green jobs are far less dependent upon subsidies than ethanol, wind, and solar.  But, wood involves more work on the part of the customers than most other types of heating.  If the economics change somewhat...

Less Clearing:  In neighboring New Hampshire, there are some other factors driving up the price of wood. 

"We can trace it to some degree to the slowdown in construction and home starts," Murray said. "A good, healthy portion of our wood source comes from the clearing of areas for wood, and that is used to build homes. A portion of what's left over is used as chips for us and the higher grade sawdust is used by the wood pellet industry. The decline and diesel prices have impacted saw mills and so we have to pay more to get it here."

Another part of the reason is the cutting of firewood or low-grade wood on a wood lot is not economical for the person cutting it or for the property owner unless they have higher grade saw timber to go along with it, Borman said. "We've seen a decline in the prices paid for quality woods like white pine, red oak and birch so a lot are not harvesting wood because of the price. As a result, there is a another reduction in the availability of the low-grade woods for firewood."

Obviously, homebuilding doesn't tend to be a renewable source of wood unless the new residents do a lot of replanting.

Even though there was a lot of snow this past winter, the ground never froze, said Borman. He said that means a lot of loggers didn't harvest because they couldn't get heavy equipment onto their wood lots.

But, a bit more winter warmth saves on the heating bills and emissions.

Random Nature #173

Squeezing Budgets:  We continue to have debates about which would be better, a cap-and-trade system or a more-direct carbon tax.  Ultimately, both make the use of fossil fuels more expensive, which should drive demand destruction.  That's what higher gas prices have begun doing in much of the developed world.

The agency forecast in its monthly Oil Market Report that global oil consumption would average 86.8 million barrels a day in 2008, or 70,000 barrels a day below the estimate that it made in its last report. Still, that would make overall demand 0.9 percent higher than in 2007.

...

The energy agency lowered its forecast for oil product demand among OECD nations by almost 130,000 barrels a day, to 48.6 million barrels in 2008.

The OECD raised its estimate for oil consumption in developing nations.  The growth in nations like China and India certainly plays a part.  So do subsidies.  

About half of humanity, from India to Chile, now benefits from cut-rate petroleum prices. In 2008, these countries will account for all the growth in world oil demand, or an additional one million barrels a day, according to Deutsche Bank. ...

And these subsidies will cost as much as $100 billion in 2008, or twice as much as last year, estimates the International Energy Agency.

...

The biggest culprits are oil exporting nations, especially in the Gulf. They continue to throw petrodollars at both fuel subsidies and big projects that consume oil.

Because of the rising costs, a number of nations--including China--have recently cut their subsidies.

Destructive Demand Destruction:  For many people--especially those living in or on the edge of poverty, the cost of energy has an enormous impact on their quality of life.  Ethanol has gotten more press, but the rising price of oil has been a major driver of global food inflation.  The impact is magnified in poor, oil-importing nations.  For instance, inflation is the highest it's been in West Africa in a decade. 

"Rising prices for crude oil and imported food products in the region as well as the increase in prices for locally produced cereals due to the poor 2007-08 season harvest have led to an increase in inflationary pressures in our countries," he said.

Rising fuel and food prices have been a factor in a rash of unrest across Africa in recent months, including in Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Senegal, which all belong to the BCEAO.

The BCEAO is the central bank for some of the poorest countries on earth and all its members import crude oil. Its other members are Benin, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Togo and Niger.

Switching regions...

In Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, rural poor people have been hit hard by the increased costs of energy such as fuel, electricity and gas. It is not only their incomes that suffer, but also the environment. Burning dung or fuel wood for heating wastes fertilizer or leads to deforestation. The introduction of fees for health care has dramatically reduced rural poor people’s access to health care services. Civil conflict and large refugee populations also tighten poverty’s hold on rural poor people.

And of course with coal being cheaper than fuel oil, a number of nations are becoming more dependent upon that dirtier source of energy.  Notable is the fact that China, which leads the world in both the production and consumption of coal, is becoming a coal importer.   

Until recently, Indonesia was an oil exporting nation.

A major survey of the nation's child care institutions this month found orphanages flooded with children separated from their parents not by death, but because of poverty.

...

Indonesia has up to 500,000 children — or 0.6 percent of the country's roughly 85 million children — living in institutions, one of the highest rates in the world, the report said. Of those, 90 percent still have one or more parent alive.

World Bank figures show that around half of Indonesia's 235 million people live on less than $2 a day. Adding to the hardship are soaring prices of staple foods and a 30 percent increase in fuel costs in May.

A chunk of that increase was due to reducing the fuel subsidy.  The reaction has been protests and a plunge in the popularity of Indonesia's president.

Surcharges:  The EU has a target that nations should get 15 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020.  Energy includes electricity, fuels, heating oil, etc.  The UK figures that it will have to generate more than a third of its electricity from wind to meet the overall goal.  With that entailing several thousand more turbines, the NIMBY rumbling is growing.  And of course, where will the money come from to make the necessary investments in those turbines and other renewable energy sources? 

Surcharges on gas and electricity are expected to reach a peak in 2020 under the government plans, as consumers help pay for £100bn investment by the private sector in wind turbines and solar panels...  The first government estimates of the cost to the consumer are published at a time when British Gas customers could face price rises of a further 30-40% later this summer as a result of a steep increase in wholesale gas costs.

Energywatch, the consumer group, said that every 1% increase in power bills brought 40,000 people into fuel poverty, defined as those who spend more than 10% of their income on lighting and heating. The current number is 4.5 million.

Energywatch estimates that the surcharges could raise the number of folks in fuel poverty by another two million.  Let's go back to the definition of fuel poverty. 

In the UK fuel poverty is said to occur when in order to heat its home to an adequate standard of warmth a household needs to spend more than 10% of its income on total fuel use. The definition of fuel poverty does not take account of the amount that a household actually spends on fuel, nor the amount available for the household to spend on fuel after other costs have been met. ...

Adequate warmth is generally defined to be 21°C (69.8°F) in the main living room and 18°C (64.4°F) in other occupied rooms during daytime hours, with lower temperatures at night...

That's a rather sloppy metric...and one ironically enough that global warming could help shrink.  Who suffers from fuel poverty in the UK?  Switching links...

The proportion of households who are in fuel poverty is much higher in the most rural areas: 16% compared to 9% in village centres, 6% in rural residential areas and 6% in urban areas.

And most of the wind turbines will be sited in rural areas.  Returning to the original article in this section...    

Higher fuel costs would not be felt until after 2010 and the main increases would come from 2015 onwards, according to the government's renewable energy consultation paper. "In 2020, as a result of the new incentives, domestic consumer bills are expected to increase 10-13% in electricity and 18-37% for gas bills," it says.

The government said the cost of building new green infrastructure, and therefore the price to the consumer, had been based on an oil price of $70 per barrel. If the price was $150, this would knock 35-40% off the relative cost of renewables. The price of oil is currently in the mid-$130s.

But when will renewables be expected to compete without lavish subsidies? 

Green Income Redistribution:  On Wednesday, British Columbians will begin paying a carbon tax.  What will this entail? 

The carbon tax will apply to virtually all fossil fuels, including gasoline, diesel, natural gas, coal, propane, and home heating fuel, making it among the broadest and most comprehensive in the world.

The carbon tax will be phased in to give individuals, businesses, and industry time to adapt, innovate, and reduce the impact of the tax. The carbon tax starts at a rate based on $10 per tonne of associated carbon, or carbon-equivalent, emissions and will rise by $5 a year for the next four years — reaching $30 per tonne by 2012. This works out to 2.41 cents per litre for gasoline, rising gradually to 7.24 cents a litre by 2012. For diesel and home heating oil, it works out to 2.76 cents per litre, rising to 8.27 cents over the same five-year period.

2.41 cents per litre coverted to U.S. units is currently 9.12 cents per gallon.  Considering that gas there is running roughly $5.30 per gallon, how much demand destruction will another nine cents cause?  And when it comes to the price of electricity, note that about 80 percent of BC's power is hydro.  

The government estimates that the carbon tax will generate about $1.85 billion (dollars and loonies are almost equal in value at the moment) over the next three years.  Where will that money go? 

The carbon tax will be revenue neutral. Legislation will require a plan to be tabled in the legislature each year, showing how the revenue raised will be returned to taxpayers. All revenue generated by the carbon tax will be returned to individuals and businesses through reductions to other taxes. None of the carbon tax revenue will be used for expenditure programs.

Let's not forget though the growth in BC's bureaucracy to manage the carbon tax.  That cost is being ignored when claiming that the new tax is revenue neutral.  At any rate, who gets the money the carbon tax generates? 

The bottom two personal income tax rates will be reduced for all British Columbians resulting in a tax cut of 2 per cent in 2008 and 5 per cent in 2009 on the first $70,000 in earnings — with further reductions expected in 2010 ($784 million over three years);

Effective July 1, 2008, the general corporate income tax rate will be reduced to 11 per cent from 12 per cent — with further reductions planned to 10 per cent by 2011 ($415 million over three years);

Effective July 1, 2008, the small business tax rate will be reduced to 3.5 per cent from 4.5 per cent — with further reductions planned to 2.5 per cent by 2011 ($255 million over three years); and

Beginning July 1, 2008, the new Climate Action Credit will provide lower-income British Columbians a payment of $100 per adult and $30 per child per year — increasing by 5 per cent in 2009 and possibly more in future years ($395 million over three years).

...

Separate from and in addition to the tax reductions made possible by the revenue-neutral carbon tax, every British Columbia resident will receive a one-time, $100 Climate Action Dividend to encourage the transition to a greener lifestyle. 

But surely there are winners and losers in this elaborate income redistribution scheme.  Well for instance, truckers aren't thrilled.  Cruise ships with a port-of-call outside of BC are exempt, as are international ships and all aircraft with a destination outside the province.  And here are a few more exemptions listed at that link...

- Fuel used on, or delivered to, native reserves by aboriginal people

- Fuel used to manufacture anodes in an electrolytic process for smelting aluminum

- Fuel used as a reductant in the production of lead or zinc

- Truck a load of organic carrots up the road to the local farmers market and you get whacked with the carbon tax. But import a truckload of lettuce across the border from California, and that foreign food enters B.C. carbon-tax-free.

- "Industrial processes" in the cement and oil-and-gas sectors and "fugitive emissions" from farms and landfills.

In other words, this carbon tax is far more style than substance.  But what if the entire nation of Canada adopted a revenue-neutral carbon tax, as the Liberal Party leader has proposed?  Here's what a think tank working with a group of community and business leaders recently came up with. 

It would force exporters to jack up their prices, putting them at a disadvantage in world markets. To protect Canada's share of global trade, Ottawa might have to exempt products destined for sale abroad from the tax.

It could induce energy-dependent manufacturers to move to countries with lax environmental policies. The one percentage point cut in corporate tax rates that Dion is offering, plus the incentives for investing in green technologies, may not be enough to stem the outflow.

Imposing a carbon tariff could contravene Canada's trade obligations. It is unclear how a Liberal government could penalize imports from countries with lax environmental policies without violating the World Trade Agreement.

Putting a price on pollution would hurt some regions more than others. The impact would be particularly severe in the industrial heartland, which is already reeling from high energy prices and a sputtering economy; and the western oil sands, which spew huge amounts of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

In fact, many in Alberta figure that the proposed carbon tax is mostly a strategy for taking some of the province's oil wealth and spreading it elsewhere. 

Random Nature #172

Chronic Ear Infections:  In recent years, Australia has been struggling with the following problem.

The Northern Territory has the highest rates of ear disease in the world.

Two-thirds of all Indigenous children there have hearing problems by the time they start school.

About half of them will end up with permanently perforated ear drums as a result of chronic ear infections.

The two bacteria that most commonly cause pneumonia bear much of the blame, Streptococcus pneumoniae and the confusingly named Haemophilus influenzae (it was discovered during and mistakenly blamed for causing a flu pandemic in the 1890s).  Both can cause a number of maladies, including otitis media, "inflammation of the middle ear." 

Dr Andrews says tests on even the tiniest babies shows the bacteria appear in their ears and noses in the very first weeks of life.

"Shortly after they're born, within a few weeks they'll start to carry the bacteria and so you get a build-up behind the ear drum and you get a perforation," he said.

"If an individual child gets that and nothing else happens, that can be resolved and recover and everybody goes on quite well.

"But if you get it and you get it again, you get it again, you can finish up with what's called chronic suppurative otitis media, so it's basically a hole in your ear drum permanently."      

Poverty plays a part--but only a part--in the high rate of infection.  Australian health authorities are now testing giving a pneumococcal vaccine (PneuMum) to pregnant mothers in hopes that they will pass along resistance to their children in womb and/or while breastfeeding.  This strategy has proven to work with some vaccines.  From this link...

The fetus passive immunization from the pregnant woman's vaccination was recognized in 1879 when Bukhardt demonstrated the protection of children whose mothers had been vaccinated against smallpox. Some vaccines commercially available are considered safe when administered during pregnancy, and provide an increase in antibody levels for the following pathogens: diphtheria, tetanus toxoids, mumps, meningococcus and Hib.

Hib is Haemophilus influenzae type b. 

A Different BT:  Bluetongue disease is a viral infection that strikes ruminants.     

BT primarily affects sheep, and susceptibility to disease varies with breed. European breeds are more susceptible to infection with BT virus. White-tailed deer and pronghorn are very susceptible to the BT virus, and may be more severely affected than sheep. Cattle, goats, North American elk, elephants, and dromedary camels may become infected with the BT virus, but infection is inapparent and they potentially serve as reservoirs.

Well, inapparent or mild in cattle, elk, etc.  In sheep, bluetongue can cause the following.

Eye and nasal discharges

Drooling as a result of ulcerations in the mouth

High body temperature

Swelling of the mouth, head and neck

Lameness

Haemorrhages into or under the skin

Inflammation at the junction of the skin and the horn of the foot – the coronary band

Respiratory problems – difficulty with breathing and nasal discharge

A blue tongue is rarely a clinical sign of infection

Deaths of sheep in a flock may reach as high as 70 per cent. Animals that survive the disease can lose condition with a reduction in meat and wool production

Infected animals aren't contagious; the 24 strains of the virus are spread by various species of midges (small, bloodsucking flies that are sometimes called gnats).  Cattle can act as an important reservoir of the disease.  However, sometimes the disease strikes when local animals are healthy and the midges have frozen out for the winter.  The assumption has been that the virus can overwinter in midge larvae, but evidence of this has been lacking.  There's also been speculation that the virus can be transported in horse manure.

Events this past winter have provided researchers with another possibility.

According to the UK's Institute for Animal Health in Pirbright, there is a "distinct possibility" that the virus might overwinter by infecting unborn calves. In January this year, pregnant cows which had recovered from bluetongue infections and no longer carried the virus were exported from Holland to Northern Ireland, which is free of bluetongue. In February, three of these gave birth to calves which carried the virus. When biting midges reappear in the spring, such calves would become a fresh source of the bluetongue virus for them. As a result, the institute suggests additional controls be targeted at newborn animals.

Intriguingly, the only bluetongue virus ever seen to cross the placenta of infected mothers to infect their fetuses was a laboratory-adapted strain used in experiments in sheep in the 1970s. This raises the possibility that Europe's BTV8 strain might be descended from a research strain or a vaccine.

Maybe.  Until its recent appearance in Europe, BTV8 was only known in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Dominican Republic.  Other strains are a problem here in the U.S.

Bluetongue was first recognized in South Africa in the late 1800s, but it was not until the early 1900s that it was described in detail. The disease was reported in Cyprus in 1943 and subsequently in Israel, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Pakistan, India, and the United States during the 1950s. In the United States, the disease is most prevalent in the southern and southwestern States.

...

For more than 25 years, the presence of bluetongue viruses in the United States has blocked the export of U.S. cattle, sheep, and goats to many major world markets, including Australia, New Zealand, and the European Union. Canada accepts U.S. cattle, but requires rigorous testing before the animals may cross the border.

Last year, there was an outbreak in sheep as far north as Montana.

Random Nature #171

Just Go Quietly into the Grave:  Which is worse, people dying for the lack of a kidney or buying and selling organs as commodities?  In most nations, it's the latter.  It's better to sentence people to death by forcing them to wait in vain for a donor organ than to encourage someone to sell an organ for financial reasons...that's immoral, inhumane, etc.  

But, some people have the resources to potentially change their fate.  Unsurprisingly, transplant tourism continues to flourish--usually in developing nations which either haven't outlawed and/or can't effectively enforce their laws.  One of the hotbeds at the moment is South Asia.  For instance...

"Nearly 2,000 kidneys are transplanted in Pakistan every year and 70 percent are bought by foreigners from Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Britain and Canada," said Dr. Zafar ul Ahsan, the top urologist at the Fatima Jinnah Hospital in Lahore.

Many sell kidneys to pay off debts.  And as we know, sometimes the kidneys are stolen.  About a year ago...

The authorities arrested nine people, four of them doctors, for abducting people, drugging them and removing their kidneys for transplant operations, the police said Saturday.

...

The police raided a house in a Lahore suburb on Friday after a man escaped from it and contacted the authorities. Ten people were found in the house; four had already had a kidney removed, the police said.

“These people are not volunteers,” the police chief said. “They were promised jobs by these criminals.”

Switching links again...

Professor Leigh Turner from McGill University in Canada says that most donors from India, Pakistan, and the Philippines receive less than 2000 dollars, and that the only winners are the organ brokers and transplant surgeons who can charge recipients more than 80,000 dollars.

He also says that commercial transplantation carries huge risks for the organ recipients, and that inadequate screening and testing has resulted in cases of HIV, hepatitis, malaria and tuberculosis.

But as has been demonstrated in Iran (previous blog here), legalizing and regulating the process greatly reduces those problems.  It's the only nation with no waiting list for kidneys, and it's saving money--and the pain and suffering of those needing transplants--by avoiding lengthy periods on dialysis.  Of note though is that the very high rate of traffic fatalities there makes a significant number of kidneys readily available.  One of the things that is adversely impacting transplant waiting lists in many Western nations is a decreasing deaths rates on the highways.  

Combining Death Sentences and Transplants:  The following is from 2000.

The night before their execution, 18 convicts were shown on a Chinese television program, their crimes announced to the public. Wilson Yeo saw the broadcast from his hospital bed in China and knew that one of the men scheduled to die would provide him with the kidney he so badly needed.

Mr. Yeo, 40, a Malaysian who manages the local branch of a lottery company here, says he never learned the name of the prisoner whose kidney is now implanted on his right side. He knows only what the surgeon told him: The executed man was 19 years old and sentenced to die for drug trafficking.

"I knew that I would be getting a young kidney," Mr. Yeo says now, one year after his successful transplant. "That was very important for me."

...

China's preferred method of capital punishment, a bullet to the back of the head, is conducive to transplants because it does not contaminate the prisoners' organs with poisonous chemicals, as lethal injections do, or directly affect the circulatory system, as would a bullet through the heart.

Back then, a recipient had to spend at least $10,000 and generally have the surgery over a holiday, when most of the executions took place.  There had been just nine kidney transplants in Malaysia the year before, meaning that Yeo was likely going to die if he didn't become a transplant tourist.  Six years later...

Responding to criticism that it cruelly and arbitrarily executes a large number of its citizens each year, Chinese officials now are gradually moving toward what they say is a more discreet way of killing its prisoners: Mobile vans.

Human rights critics say they may look more like officially sanctioned roaming death squads, which simply allow China to execute its prisoners more quickly, easily and out of the public eye. Chinese legal officials counter that its fleet of mobile execution vehicles are a "more humane" form of carrying out death sentences.

...

As opposed to the shootings which took place in public, inmates are now executed in purpose-built vans in an almost clinical environment. Prisoners are confined to a bed, similar to an ambulance stretcher, and put to death with lethal injections. The contents of the drug cocktails used for the lethal injections are mixed in Beijing and delivered to local intermediate courts where the trials take place.

Actually, China first began using the vans in 1997.  Executing people in such a manner is cheaper and less manpower-intensive than a public firing squad.  When this article was written, Yunnan Province--which borders Myanmar and Vietnam--had 18 such vans. 

Yet as mobile executions chambers begin to silently roll into more and more towns, making capital punishment easier and faster to deliver, fears have risen amongst human rights activists and death penalty opponents that China is relying more on lethal injection because it is harvesting organs of executed prisoners in an effort to supply the country's growing market for organ transplants.

Chinese hospitals started organ transplants in the 1960s and now perform between 10,000 and 20,000 transplants annually, according to official figures. A kidney transplant in China costs about 7,200 dollars but this official price could swell to 20,000 or even 50,000 dollars if the patient is willing to pay more to obtain an organ sooner. Even those prices though amount only to a fraction of the price for an organ transplant in developed countries.

Bowing to pressure--possibly because of the upcoming Olympics, China banned transplant tourism later in '06.  But when it comes to the continued recycling of organs from executed prisoners, it's hard to tell because the bodies are cremated.

Quality Control:  Recently in Pleasonton CA...

“My wife was due to have a live kidney transplant on February 15, 2008,” Ron said. “About two weeks prior to that, it was a Monday morning, we were doing her home dialysis, and I gave her the heparin, which she administers herself, she is a retired nurse. After we finished dialyzing--at about two that afternoon, she began to feel nauseous, a common symptom associated with contaminated heparin. Then about four hours after the dialysis my wife began having difficulty breathing. We have an oxygen generator at home, so I put her on that but she was still having difficulty. So I called 911. By the time the ambulance arrived Maureen was in a lot of distress. In the ambulance on the way to the hospital she coded – her heart had stopped. Her blood pressure just bottomed out. The paramedics performed CPR for 20 minutes. Once she was in the ER, they got her on a ventilator to try and stabilize her. Then when she went into intensive care unit (ICU) she coded three more times. They had to use a defibrillator to bring her back. So her heart stopped four times that evening.”

She also may have had a mild stroke.  Yes, she was a victim of that contaminated heparin from China. 

Maureen remained in hospital for two more months. “She was in the ICU for about 17-18 days, and the rest of the time the doctors were trying to stabilize her,” Ron said.” The following month she was moved to a speciality and rehabilitation hospital. She came home in the middle of March and I’ve been working with her every day since. For the past month we’ve had a nurse and a physical therapist coming in once a week. Now we’re doing outpatient physical therapy. My wife is bed ridden, in a wheelchair, and she can’t do very much of anything, including taking a shower.”

Maureen still needs a transplant, but does she even qualify any more?  They've had to seek legal help.

Random Nature #170

Impact Protein:  There are a myriad of federal, state, and local rules when it comes to dealing with roadkill.  In 2004, Maryland did a survey of several states and provinces regarding how they manage carcass disposal...the responses are all over the map.  And let's not forget that there's more to consider than just the big carcasses.  Pulling a paragraph from this quirky article on the topic...

In a Rapid City, S.D., gallery, a fellow told me in a hushed voice about harvesting quills from road-killed porcupines to make jewelry. Like many people I met along the way, he was reluctant to speak openly about his scavenging. Federal and state laws prohibit collection of certain animals, from the road or otherwise. Unless you’re a Native American with a religious permit, it’s illegal to possess an eagle feather. If you hit a deer in Arizona, you can salvage the meat, but in Oregon it’s illegal.

This winter in Northern Idaho, volunteers were gathering moose and deer carcasses and providing the meat to a food bank in Coeur d'Alene.  Obviously they can't use sick animals, rotting carcasses, etc.  But note that it's not always illegal to salvage meat in Oregon.  For instance four years ago,

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife announced Monday that it is reinstating the permit held by Lois Tulleners, owner and manager of the White Wolf Sanctuary at Tidewater, had, since 1998. The permit allows her to take road killed animals as food for her wolves.

...

Tulleners received a permit for the retrieval of dead deer and elk from public roads, and purchased a winch system with which to haul onto her pickup the carcasses. After she was told that her permit was being pulled, several state and local government agencies contacted ODFW to protest the decision.

Chris Wheaton, regional manager for ODFW, said the decision to remove the permit was not based on the sanctuary's profit or non-profit status, according to a March 12, 2004 letter to Tulleners. "The decision was made because it was decided that allowing the use of a public resource (deer and elk) to benefit a non-public entity is not an appropriate use of the state's wildlife resources," Wheaton said. 

Rather than diving off into some of Oregon's laws regarding who can possess and sell what to whom...

Waste Disposal:  Caltrans got into some trouble last fall in San Mateo County related to people discovering a couple of dump sites composed mostly of bleached bones. 

Violating Caltrans policy, some road crew members used the remote sites apparently to save time rather than drive to a rendering plant or an animal shelter, Caltrans officials have said. Both sites are located in areas where deer often are hit by cars.

Domestic animals are supposed to be taken to animal shelters for possible identification.  The boneyards got folks asking around to see what other agencies were doing with their corpses.

Steve Martarano, spokesman for California Fish & Game, said Friday that "sometimes we do leave them for nature to take its course, but we don't have any dumping sites or anything like that."

What local wardens do with roadkill "depends on the situation and the area," according to Martarano. "In a remote area, we may take it off to the side of the road or down the hill. When we do that, we are very conscious of water issues."

If the agency needs to dispose of a drugged animal that had to be euthanized, fish and game employees will take the carcass to a rendering plant "because we don't want those drugs in the environment," he said.

But rendering is getting increasingly expensive, especially if there isn't a plant nearby.  Heck, just collecting the animals costs money.  In Illinois, the state has decided to save by letting nature do the work.

The state's transportation department says it won't be picking up as much roadkill left along roads because it spent too much of its budget during the winter.

IDOT says it spent more than twice the allotted $40 million on clearing ice and snow removal because of rising fuel costs and harsh weather last winter.

Dead animals in driving lanes and any deemed hazardous to motorists will be removed. But much of the rest will be left for scavengers.

Some creatures will certainly be happy.

Making Mulch:  In New York, more than 75,000 deer alone become roadkill each year.  Little wonder the state has been a pioneer in composting carcasses. 

Using a simple composting technique, the Cornell Waste Management Institute (CWMI) discovered it takes about a year to turn deer carcasses into compost that can be used for landscaping purposes along the very roadsides that were the animals' death sites. The cost of composting a deer: less than $25 a carcass.Obviously, not a large percentage of roadkill is salvageable.

...

Increasingly, state, county and local highway departments are actively turning to composting to solve the ubiquitous deer problem. Already more than a dozen composting sites, called animal piles, have been established around the state, including one long "windrow" installed by the NYSDOT in Ulster County that, over time, has grown to contain 700 carcasses.

Composting animal carcasses is not new; chickens, pigs, calves, cows and even whales have been composted, according CWMI. Federal- and state-funded research conducted by Harrison and CWMI staff members Jean Bonhotal and Mary Schwarz shows that, for deer, passively aerated piles -- essentially elongated piles of wood chips in which deer carcasses are placed side-by-side -- are not only inexpensive but protect human health and the environment. 

Microbial action in the pile causes it to heat up. Once the internal temperature reaches 110 degrees Fahrenheit, natural processes decompose the carcass within six months. The high temperatures and microbial processes during composting greatly reduce or kill most pathogens, minimizing the chance of spreading disease. It takes a year to make usable compost, according to Harrison. 

One of those concerns is the following... 

Chronic wasting disease has not been detected among wild deer in Montana but exists in some border states and provinces, and likely will show up in deer here, said Feldner, wasting disease coordinator for the wildlife department.

He said composting will not defeat chronic wasting disease prions, which are complex proteins, and there could be a risk of transferring the illness to deer through environmental contamination from sick, composted animals.

Research continues.

Not Just Roadkill:  Another factor is contributing to the adoption of carcass composting in part of Montana.  Grizzlies are drawn to the dead--especially in the Fall--for a nutritious meal.  That became problematic in the Blackfoot Valley when grizzlies started recolonizing the area and visiting the boneyards on ranches.

Faced with a growing population of the endangered bears in the Blackfoot Valley, a coalition of landowners, agencies and conservationists is disposing of livestock carcasses by sending them to the landfill or a compost pile.

Since 2003, the project has removed more than 1,000 livestock carcasses and reduced the number of conflicts between grizzlies and people to nearly zero in the Blackfoot Valley, where the bears are recolonizing former habitat that long ago was converted to ranch land, officials said.

The Montana Department of Transportation operates four composting sites in the Blackfoot Valley, saving the Missoula district about $140 per day in dealing with roadkill.  MDOT used to either drag the carcasses into nearby brush or take them to a landfill.  One of the four composting sites in the Valley has been made available to ranchers, though they use separate piles. 

The project's partners include the Blackfoot Challenge, MDOT, ranchers, FWP, the state Department of Environmental Quality, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and Allied Waste.

The livestock composting costs $12,000 to $15,000 a year, which is funded by donations from ranchers, grants and other funds.

The composting areas are surrounded with electric fence to keep the grizzlies and other unwelcome visitors out. 

Montana cooks the carcasses more quickly than does New York.

The “cooking piles” are built on an asphalt pad, where the carcasses are placed atop a layer of wood chips. A layer of previously composted material is heaped on that, followed by another layer of wood chips. Workers add water and stir the material to accelerate the decomposition.

The wood chips and decomposing carcasses can heat up to more than 170 degrees, creating large piles of what looks and smells like black mulch - except for a few thigh bones and hooves, which also eventually disintegrate.

The piles finish decomposing after about a month in the summer and about 45 days in the winter.

...

MDOT has accumulated about 500 tons of the finished mulch at its composting sites in west-central Montana. The mulch is being stored on site until state authorities decide whether it can be spread along roadsides to grow native grasses.

Label it organic and it will sell.

Random Nature #169

Inflation: In a study published last week,

...the French finance ministry has found that supermarket prices have risen by up to 18 per cent in the past two months alone. Butter, pasta and milk have all gone up by nine per cent since last year. If you buy a baguette on the streets of Paris, the price will have risen by anything from five to eight per cent.

...

Across the Rhine, things are much the same. Last year, Germans paid the equivalent of 80p for a litre of milk. Today, they will have little change left from £1. A loaf of bread has suddenly risen from £1 to £1.20. Eggs are up by the same margin. Only meat, with a price increase of a mere three per cent, has risen alongside the general rate of inflation. Every other category of food has comfortably outpaced Germany's retail price rises.

"For me it just makes a big difference when I get to the checkout," says Melanie Müller, a 21-year-old florist in Berlin. "Dairy products in particular have gone up, so I buy more fruit. But those prices have risen by more than 15 per cent too."

Miss Muller's worries are shared by millions more shoppers down in Spain. Nowhere in the entire eurozone has seen bigger increases in food prices: the latest estimate suggests that flour and milk have risen by anything from 23 per cent to 40 per cent in the last year, and eggs by 11 per cent.

Retail milk prices are starting to roll over. Late last year, the EU proposed raising milk production quotas by two percent in April as part of its gradual effort to eliminate the quotas by 2015. The quotas have been part of the EU's elaborate farm subsidies. The wholesale price started dropping in anticipation of the increased production, and accelerated once it took effect. The squeeze is on, and the pain is greatest for the small farmers...larger operations are more cost-efficient.

Wasting Food: Dairy cattle don't have a convenient "off" switch...it takes awhile to slow milk production. So if you're losing money with every gallon produced, what are the alternatives?

The threat of an all-out strike in protest at low milk prices was spreading across Europe yesterday (Wednesday) as disgruntled dairy farmers vented their frustration at falling profits and rising production costs by pouring their milk away. Hundreds of thousands of litres of raw milk were fed to calves or sprayed on fields as a German-led boycott of dairies was stepped up.

Since Tuesday German farmers have chosen to dispose of their milk on their farms rather than send it to the market, in a desperate attempt to force a price rise. The amount they receive for milk has fallen by 30% in the past six months, while production costs have risen by around 8%.

The Association of German Dairy Farmers, which represents around half of the country's 64,000 farmers, is calling for a price of 40 to 45 cents (31p-35p) a litre, up from the 27 to 30 cents to which it has sunk in some parts. It has called on its members to strike for an indefinite period.

...

In Austria the dairy union IG Milch urged its members to supply dairies with only half the quantity of milk the farmers had contracted to deliver. In the region around Zurich, in Switzerland, deliveries were down by as much as two-thirds.

Those fields are going to reek as that fertilizer sours. Meanwhile in Holland,

Dutch dairy farmers will end a blockade of a milk factory on Monday (today) after a court ruled the action to protest against low wholesale milk purchasing prices must be halted, the Dutch Dairymen Board (DDB) said.

The factory in Nijkerk, owned by dairy group Friesland Foods, has been blockaded since Tuesday when the board launched a boycott on delivering milk to dairy companies to protest against the low prices.

...

The DDB, which provides about 30 percent of the Netherlands' milk production, has said farmers are being squeezed by high production costs estimated at around 45 eurocents per kg--well above milk prices at around 30-35 eurocents a kg.

Over the weekend, the courts ruled that the farmers must end their blockade. The Dutch government supports an end to the quotas, while nations where small farmers are more numerous and/or politically more powerful (like Austria) want to keep the quotas.

Non-Corporate? Fonterra Cooperative Group is New Zealand's largest company, accounting for seven percent of the nation's GDP and over 20 percent of its export income. The Cooperative is owned by over 11,000 of the nation's dairy farmers plus some non-farm shareholders. Fonterra is the world's sixth largest dairy company, controlling over one-third of all international dairy trade. 

The Cooperative sets the price of milk paid to the significant majority of the nation's dairy farmers. Those payouts are rising in response to increased costs.

Milk suppliers to the world's largest dairy exporter will be paid 7.90 New Zealand dollars (US$6.15; 3.97 euros) for each kilogram (2.2 pounds) of milk solids for the fiscal year ending May 31, Fonterra Chairman Henry van der Heyden said.

The payout is expected to lift the average farmer payout for the 2007-08 season to around NZ$800,000 (US$623,000; 400,000 euros). Farmers must pay production, rental and other costs from their payout.

It will be a record 6.8 percent higher than the NZ$7.30 (US$5.68; 3.66 euro) level set in mid-April and more than 20 percent above the level forecast last August.

New Zealand farmers have operated without any subsidies from government since 1985.

Fonterra is a natural target of New Zealand's Green Party, which typically gets 5-6 percent of the national vote.

The Green Party is accusing dairy giant Fonterra of racking up multi-billion dollar profits at the expense of families who can hardly afford to buy milk and cheese.

...

(Co-leader) Fitzsimons says Fonterra can afford to take less profit on the 4% of its product it sells in New Zealand and has proposed that the price of milk sold domestically is capped.

She says the party is not asking Fonterra to sell milk at a loss, but at a reasonable profit rather than an excessive one.

...

But the proposal has been flatly refused by Fonterra which says it is already contributing significantly to the domestic market.

"One, we haven't passed on all the increases of milk cost to domestic consumers. Two, Fonterra subsidise the domestic market to the tune of about $50 million or more this year. And third, Fonterra accepts lower margins in New Zealand than it does in any other international market," says Fonterra brands managing director Peter McClure.

That local discount also functions as a trade barrier, making it harder for other brands to compete. FYI, Fonterra has been exploring ways to "demutualize," something many farmers view with suspicion.

Random Nature #168

A Different Type of Feedlot:  There are over 500 horses living at this venerable facility for part of the year, making it a "concentrated animal feeding facility."  It's been allowing waste to discharge into a nearby creek and wetlands.

The Environmental Protection Agency has ordered Suffolk Downs to reduce the amount of pollutants the horse racing track discharges into a Boston Harbor tributary after finding the track in violation of the federal Clean Water Act.

The agency issued the order after finding horse manure, urine, bedding material, and stable wash water from the East Boston track entering Sales Creek through storm water runoff, the EPA announced in a statement.

...

EPA inspections of the track's facilities found that horse and stable wash water were discharged repeatedly into the facility's storm drain during dry weather, and inspectors saw storm water contaminated with manure, as well as "highly turbid, brown runoff" being discharged into Sales Creek, according to the statement. Samples showed bacterial and solid waste being discharged into Sales Creek during both dry and wet weather.

With racehorses, there could be some extra ingredients in their "flop" and thus the nearby waterways. 

Rewards and Risks:  With the Eight Bells having to be put down just after the Kentucky Derby, folks are paying more attention to what these horses endure.  Drugs are often part of the equation.  From a recent Popular Science article entitled "Why Race Horses Are Dying."

The more intriguing and divisive issue surrounds medication. The entire sports landscape is engulfed in the performance-enhancing debacle and horse racing is no exception. From anti-inflammatory drugs, to pain relievers, to steroids, drugs are administered—often legally—to just about every racehorse in America. While increased performance raises competitive balance issues, the ability of the drugs to mask pain that puts injured horses on the track gives legitimacy to PETA’s cries of animal cruelty.

There are 38 racing jurisdictions in America and no standardized drug testing or legality. In 2002, the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium was created to address the issue. Six years later, they merely have blueprints and no consensus. Even if the Consortium creates a standard, it will likely allow specific steroids and provide little regulation for pain medication and anti-inflammatory drugs.

For a more detailed look at the steroids and hormones used, this link is an interesting read.  There are also bronchodilators, vasodilators, on and on.   

Caught Enhancing:  But it's not just racehorses that are medicated in ways that many find questionable.  Last year in New Jersey, which can test horses at both the tracks and their farms...

Harness racing driver Eric Ledford pleaded guilty to drug possession in a plea bargain Wednesday which might allow the former Hambletonian winner to return to work in a couple of months, his attorney said.

Ledford, who won trotting's most prestigious race in 2002 with Chip Chip Hooray, pleaded guilty to third-degree possession of a controlled dangerous substance, Equipoise, before state Superior Court Judge Bette E. Uhrmacher in Monmouth County.

Ledford's 60-year-old father, Seldon, a nationally known trainer from Illinois, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess Equipoise, an anabolic steroid.

...

State police found the blood enhancer erythropoietin (EPO) as well as syringes and other banned drugs during a search at the East Windsor home of Ryan Dailey and Ardena Dailey, grooms employed by the Ledfords.

The scandal surrounding the 1998 Tour de France was mostly over the illegal use of EPO, something elite cycling had already been dealing with for a decade.  From that link...

EPO (short for erythropoietin) is a hormone secreted by the kidney that stimulates the bone marrow to increase red blood cell production. The primary benefit of altitude training is an increase in the natural production of EPO which increases the hemoglobin content of the blood. Oxygen is transported in the blood attached to hemoglobin. An increase in EPO, therefore, leads to an increase in the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood. More oxygen in the blood means more oxygen reaches the muscles for aerobic energy production, which enhances performance for long distance runners, cyclists, and other endurance athletes.

Some of the drugs used on trotters can be rather exotic.  From last year...

Patrick Biancone, one of the world's most successful thoroughbred trainers, is being investigated by the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority for possible drug violations, including snake venom reportedly found in his barn.

...

The current investigation began on June 22 when KHRA investigators searched Biancone's barns at Keeneland. According to a report in the Daily Racing Form based on an anonymous source, the search was sparked by one of Biancone's horses testing positive for derivatives of caffeine and an inhalant. The source said that during the search, cobra venom in crystalline form - a neurotoxin that can be injected to deaden pain in a horse's feet and legs - was found in a refrigerator in a tack room.

...

Snake venom is prohibited to use on racehorses, classified by the Racing Commissioners International as a Class 1 drug that has no therapeutic value but can affect racing performance. Two trainers at the Saratoga harness track recently pleaded guilty to felony race-fixing charges for injecting a horse with cobra venom last October.

In 1999, Biancone was suspended for prohibited medications in Hong Kong...which has more stringent rules regarding horses, drugs, and testing than we do.  The equestrian events for this year's Olympics will be held in Hong Kong, a distant 1,200 miles from Beijing.

Relaxed Athleticism:  After the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, 

Four horses, including two gold-medal winners – Cian O'Connor's Waterford Crystal who won the individual show jumping for Ireland, and Ludger Beerbaum's Gold-fever, a member of Germany's winning team – produced positive dope tests at the Athens Olympic Games.

Waterford Crystal tested positive for zuclopenthixol (an antipsychotic which also acts as an antihistimine), fluphenazine (another antipsychotic), guanabenz (an anti-hypertension drug), and reserpine (an antipsychotic which also controls high blood pressure).  That cocktail could certainly calm a horse.  O'Connor was disqualified and lost his medal--the only one that Ireland received at that Olympics.  More on Beerbaum in a moment.

Later in '04...

The International Equestrian Federation (FEI) is currently processing "six or seven" positive tests for a sedative drug that is used as a human medication and has no known equine therapeutic effect.

"It is not a legitimate treatment. It can only be in the horse's system as a performance enhancer," said Frits Sluyter, head of the FEI veterinary department. "It is very dangerous to the horse and very damaging to the sport.

What's the purpose of giving the horses sedatives for certain competitions? 

"Ten years ago we weren't doing any 'flying changes' - where you have to change legs in canter without going into trot. It's a movement that demands complete harmony between horse and rider and if you've got a horse that is slightly tense it could get very upset by it. Now we have four of those movements. And it won't be long before we're doing even more. We're moving from a sport of true bravery and courage. Now you have to be a technician."

...

"Dressage is the first event in three-day eventing and if you're not in the first 10 you really haven't got a chance. Look at the statistics. A good dressage result is crucial. There's your temptation.

"People are competitive and want to win. I believe the problem is getting worse and worse and it's very sad. Sometimes you look at a horse and it's as though a magic wand has been waved. All of a sudden it gets very well behaved. You can't always blame the rider. I wonder how many riders go to trainers and don't even know what the horse is being given. They don't ask questions. Their faith in their trainer is total."

The FEI has since expanded its list of banned substances to help address this issue.  Switching links once more...

Debate has long raged in the equestrian community over whether the FEI should ease its zero tolerance policy, with riders, including those in Athens, often denying cheating and blaming innocuous-seeming medication used to treat horses.

Beerbaum said he had applied a skin ointment to his mount which might have been approved had he first approached the FEI's veterinary commission to obtain an exemption.

Beerbaum lost his appeal.  The drug in this case was the corticosteroid betamethasone, which is sometimes found in anti-itching creams because it's anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive.  It can also be injected into joints to combat inflammation.

Zero tolerance sounds stringent, but the drug testers are always playing catch-up to the chemists.

Random Nature #167

Damned if They Don't:  Some impressive bureaucracies have developed around the need to survey for protected species.  But who's responsible when the supposed experts get things wrong?  In the following, a local government in the UK is rather unhappy with the national government.

Leicestershire County Council delayed a major road-building scheme for three months after evidence of great crested newts was found on the site. The species is protected by law, but after the authority paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for special newt-fencing and traps, not one of the rare creatures was discovered.

The action was taken on the strength of a report from environmental experts, which found there could have been between one and 10 of the 6-inch amphibians on the site.

Officials yesterday lodged a complaint with the government, claiming the outlay would have a knock-on effect on local services.

The environmental experts in question work for Natural England, a relatively new government agency which was cobbled together from parts of existing government agencies...something like our Deparment of Homeland Security.

The great crested newt is native to much of Northern Europe.  According to the World Conservation Union's Red List of Threatened Species, the newt's conservation status is "least concern."  However, it is considered a protected species by both the EU and UK because of habitat concerns--land development pressure from population and farm growth.  Despite this, the UK's Biodiversity Action Plan notes that "The great crested newt is still quite widespread in Britain." However, their numbers have been declining, and their habitat is increasingly fragmented.  Politics and science...

The possible colony was found near the £15 million Earl Shilton bypass in Leicester during surveys last summer. A 1,000-yard exclusion zone was erected around ponds while further tests were carried out and hundreds of thousands of pounds was spent on newt-proof fences and traps to move the amphibians when hibernation ended in spring.

Workers were even required to inspect the traps twice a day once temperatures rose above 41F.

But Derek Needham, council engineering manager, confirmed yesterday: "We have caught a number of normal newts but no great crested newts."

Officials at the council, which commissioned the road, could have faced a large fine or even jail if they had failed to protect a colony. Mr Parsons said: "We have to safeguard wildlife, but we need a change in the law. This is an awful lot of money, and the public will take it badly."

A possible colony that could have 1-10 newts?  Well, the experts saw evidence of great crested newts, but didn't actually see any. 

Fear of Delays:  A retired couple--a computer consultant and a doctor--own an officially-historic, 300-year-old, six-bedroom farmhouse valued at a £1 million in Wiltshire...not that far south of Leicestershire.  Last July, a drainage ditch near their home became blocked with debris (downstream) and flooded, sending three-feet of water through their home.  It caused £250,000 in damage. 

They were just starting the final stages of repairs when they were flooded again (in March).

It then emerged that the drainage ditch, which takes run-off away from the motorway, is still blocked.

They wrote to the Highways Agency asking for permission to unblock it but this was refused.

Instead, officials ordered the newt search, saying staff would have to comb the water by hand to look for the three-inch creatures.

However, the survey cannot start immediately because the newts might be breeding and birds in hedges and trees along the ditch might be sitting on eggs.

The ditch had been identified as potential habitat for the great crested newt.  Thus, it must be checked before any work can be done.

The survey will take three months, which obviously makes the couple nervous about the potential for more flooding.  If any of the newts are found, they'll be relocated, which itself could take several months.  Note that these newts are predominantly nocturnal and typically hibernate "between October and late February."

"It's not that we're not sympathetic towards wildlife - in fact, we're very keen on it and understand the need to protect certain species," he added.

"But it seems ridiculous that we can't protect our property from more flood damage for many months because newts may be there."

This puts the priority of several programs into better perspective.

An Olympics Ripple:  It's supposed to cost about £70,000--£450 per--to do the following because of the Summer Games in 2012.

The great crested newts are being moved to make way for a cycle circuit in Hog Hill, Redbridge, east London.

They will be placed in a safe area within the new facility, which is replacing the Eastway Cycle Circuit where the Olympic Velopark will stand.

In order to secure planning permission for the site the London Development Agency had to ensure the newts' safety.

...

Vincent Bartlett, the London Development Agency's planning manager, said: "Ultimately this process has taken eight months because we have had to wait for the soil to be damp and warm enough for the newts to come out, and get our whole approach approved by Natural England.

But, the newts have been just one of many delays in getting a replacement circuit sited and built.  Collection and relocation of the newts was supposed to be completed last fall.  Authorities blamed the weather, but they sure started late in the year.  Now the plan is to finish collecting the newts by this summer.  I'm sure the cost has gone up.

Random Nature #166

Undesirable Glowing:  One of the things that CSI shows have taught us is that ultraviolet light can help us see things, like certain bodily fluids that are naturally fluorescent.  People can now buy portable UV lights (like this one) to check, for instance, the cleanliness of their motel room.  It makes an interesting tool for quality control. 

The bacterium Clostridium difficile (a relative of the one that causes botulism) is a common cause of diarrhea (previous blog here).  Add the right chemicals, and it can be made to glow under UV light.

Alfa's toilet inspectors smeared the UV lotion under the seats of 20 toilets and commodes being used by patients with diarrhoea at a hospital in Winnipeg. Seven of these patients had C. difficile infection, while 13 others did not. The toilets and commodes were tested every weekday for six months and checked using UV light to determine how well they had been cleaned. In addition, samples were taken from toilet surfaces to determine whether C difficile spores were present.

The UV marker revealed that the commodes for the seven patients isolated with C. difficile infections had not been properly cleaned 72% of the time. The toilets fared slightly better, with half of the samples taken showing no residual UV lotion after cleaning. The 13 patients not on isolation had much cleaner toilets, with only 14% glowing brightly under UV light. Further assessments showed that differences in toilet cleaning were “ward dependent” and since specific cleaners work on different wards, the results likely reflect characteristics of the individual cleaning staff.

More worryingly, C. difficile was still detected in 40% of samples taken from the cleanest toilets (i.e. those with no detectable UV marker). “This suggests that both the physical cleaning action as well as the disinfectant/cleaning agent were ineffective for killing and/or removing C. difficile from toilets,” notes Alfa.

Spores are harder to kill because they're designed to survive conditions that would otherwise kill the bacteria.  Worse still, hospitals in several nations (including the U.S.) have been struggling with a superbug version of C. difficile.  In the UK, it kills more people than MRSA.

Seeking Luminescent Feedback:  Researchers at Ohio State University were looking a better way to test of how potential cancer drugs--individually and in combination--impacted adult T-cell lymphoma and leukemia (ATLL).  This is a particularly difficult cancer for multiple reasons, including the following:

“We can inject these tumor cells into the abdomen of the mice and they will grow in the animals' lymph nodes,” explained Rosol, “but normally, you can't detect the extent of the animal's disease until the cancer is in its later stages.”   

Making the cancer cells luminesce on demand enables some rather precise feedback.      

...Rosol's team took a novel approach: They took a gene responsible for a firefly's glow and genetically inserted it into these tumor cells. That gene produces the enzyme luciferase in the insects which, when combined with another compound, luciferin, causes the firefly's distinctive glow.

The mice then received these genetically modified tumor cells and the researchers injected luciferin into the animals. Cancer cells containing the luciferase would combine with the luciferin and glow in the dark, giving the team a clear picture of the extent of disease inside the animal.

“We put these mice inside a blackened chamber with a digital camera and then took their pictures. The only light present would be the light emitted by the cancer cells,” Rosol said.

“We just measured the light that we could see coming out of the animal – the more light, the more tumor growth; the less light, less tumor.”

Here's another way to use luminescence in cancer treatment. 

A study was carried out by researchers of the University of Michigan Health System who inserted the gene which is responsible for the firefly glow-producing molecule into mice with cancer. The researchers kept the molecule from producing the telltale glow until cells started to die in response to cancer treatment given to the mice. Researchers then used a highly sensitive camera to detect the glow in the mice as the cancer cells were destroyed by the drugs which was being tested.

Researchers concluded that the results of the study indicated that the glow molecule could aid in faster testing of new drugs for cancer, blood diseases, autoimmune disorders, heart attack damage and others, as these molecules could provide real time information about the effectiveness of new medications.

Some day with radiation treatments, maybe we'll nuke 'em 'til they don't glow.

Lumenoscopy:  The human papillomavirus (HPV) doesn't just help cause cervical cancer.

It has long been recognized that oral cancer kills one American every hour, but even health experts thought the primary causes were smoking and heavy drinking, and the main victims were older men. Fresh research and a new FDA-approved technology are putting a whole new light on all-too-common, and all-too-deadly oral cancer, indicating new causes and much younger male and female victims.

Johns Hopkins researchers, writing in the February 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, reported that the sexually transmitted HPV virus, a major cause of cervical cancer, causes as many cancers of the upper throat as tobacco and alcohol combined. Oral sex is the likely method of transmission. The researchers say HPV is the primary cause of some 5,600 cancers per year in the tonsils, lower tongue and upper throat. And, they found, the incidence rate for HPV-related oral cancers among males has been rising steadily for three decades. Co-author Dr. Maura Gillison told the Associated Press, "If current trends continue, within the next 10 years there may be more oral cancers in the United States caused by HPV than tobacco or alcohol."

Here's a description of the technology.

ViziLite Plus with TBlue is an oral lesion identification and marking system that is used as an adjunct to the conventional head and neck examination. It is comprised of a chemiluminescent light source (ViziLite) to improve the identification of lesions and a blue phenothiazine dye to mark those lesions identified by ViziLite. ViziLitePlus with TBlue is designed to be used in a patient population at increased risk for oral cancer. ...

In clinical trials involving 13,000 female patients, abnormal squamous epithelium in the cervical complex appears distinctly white after washing the cervix with a dilute acetic acid solution and viewed under chemiluminescent light (Speculite).  Similarly, examination of the oral cavity under chemiluminescent light (ViziLite) after rinsing with a dilute acetic acid solution, abnormal squamous epithelium tissue will appear distinctly white. Lumenoscopy has demonstrated in numerous studies to improve the ability to visualize mucosal lesions and initially identify clinically suspicious lesions.

The rinse (flavored vinegar) and ViziLite glowstick combine to make tiny lesions a bit easier to see. 

TBlue is a patented, pharmaceutical-grade toluidine blue-based metachromatic dye.  It is used to further evaluate and closely monitor changes in ViziLite-identified lesions.  It has been proposed that living cells will differentially accumulate toluidine blue based on parameters related to metabolic activity.  TBlue packaged in an easy to use 3-swab system, provides the deep blue staining that allows ViziLite-identified lesions to be seen clearly under normal light.

The FDA approved the ViziLite in 2001 and the TBlue oral lesion marking system in 2005.  But, the American Dental Association still doesn't endorse the test.  This article helps explain why the ADA denied its seal of approval.  Nonetheless, the ease of testing more people has brought to light the increasing prevalence of oral cancer in groups who weren't thought to be at high risk.